


extremis

by markhyuckfest



Category: NCT (Band), SM Rookies
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 05:43:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17197622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/markhyuckfest/pseuds/markhyuckfest
Summary: Prompt Number: MH019Side Pairings: Lee Jeno/Huang Ren Jun/Na JaeminSummary: Good news: no bones broken. Bad news: his entire fist just went straight through the wall.Mark proceeds to scream his head off.





	extremis

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's Note:** universe mildly based on supernatural universe bc it eerily fits my existing idea of a universe where they fight off ghosts, but the similarity to the 2x01 plot is purely coincidental. i was alrdy writing this fic when i saw that episode so imagine my giant "HUH". also, me @ spn validating every single idea i ever had abt the verse!!!!!!!!
> 
> this fic is a lot of firsts to me: first 20K fic, first fic i actually cried over whilst writing bc it's not the easiest and not exactly my place of comfort but definitely one of the closest to my heart. however, it may contain a lot of errors as i have gone completely blind over the past month i was working on this. 
> 
> to the prompter. fair warning my dude, i went wild with this one. may not what you imagined it to be but pls under no circumstances, are we to harm the writer. thankies. 
> 
> thank you for the mods for being super understanding and patient with me and my headassery, you guys are the real mvps here.

**I.**  
_mark_ ****  


**_Mark_** opens his eyes and finds himself standing in an empty hallway in a dimly-lit hospital.

It’s always disorienting to wake up to a place you haven’t been before, but there’s nothing more disorienting than waking up upright in a hospital with no recollection of how you ended up there in the first place.

The hall is sparse and quiet, save for the distant humming of hospital noises at night. _At night._ He can tell it’s nighttime in a weird, certain sort of way. Perhaps it’s the lack of patients in the halls or the eerie lack of people at all.

Mark has been here before, at least, to recognize it is as the private hospital he had visited some time in the past. Albeit, standing in an unfamiliar hall. The only thing close to familiar about this situation judging from its unsettling stillness, is that this has all the makings of a typical horror movie and he’s caught in a junction of halls, posing as an excellent doe-eyed first kill.

Horror movie.

Mark’s head spins. He stumbles back a step from the rush, a finger pressing hard against the center of his temple to counter its aching. Flashes of distorted images wink in and out of his head in nauseating surges, shifty like sand, dripping down through his fingers the more he tries to get a strong grip on them. With each try to get a hold of the memories, the pain stabs him in between the eyes and fills his head with screaming static.

One minute he’s in pain and gasping, raspy and urgent, then the next it’s gone, as quickly as it started. Mark steadies his wobbly knees as soon as it fades off into the background. That’s it. _Horror movie_. He’s on his way to watch a horror movie with someone. Someone with a golden smile and a brighter yellow pullover.

His senses collapse and he’s back again at the crossroads of hallways leading away from each other. Mark twirls to get a good look on each of them again and again, not sure where to go but sure as hell making himself look weird and helpless. He feels like nine once again, a kid in the verge of bursting into pathetic tears just because he couldn’t remember which hall leads back to his grandfather’s ward. Only this time, there’s no one to hold his hand or ask other people nicely like someone did for him back then. This time, there isn’t even anyone _at all._ He’s alone, feeling even weaker and perplexed now than he was a child. Why do hospital have to be so strikingly similar to labyrinths? They’re both easy to get lost in. Both has walls threatening to close in the longer you stay within them.

He doesn’t even know _how_ he got here in the first place. Or why there seems to be a block in his head, preventing him from accessing his memories on top of all the weird things happening to him right now? A prick prods between his eyes, the beginning of another nauseating headache like the one he just had, and he squeezes them shut. Okay. Trying to remember is not an viable option at this moment. Better find answers somewhere else.

Mark catches movement at the hall to his right and sees a nurse exiting a room in a distance, clutching her clipboard against her chest and heading down his way.

“ _Finally,”_ he whispers to himself then hollers, “Excuse me, nurse?”

She trudges on with purpose but doesn’t respond, tracing data on her clipboard with a free finger. But she must have seen him right? Or heard? Impossible not to. He’s just standing there.

In a louder voice, Mark tries again. “Sorry, can I ask you something? Do you happen to know how I got here?”

Still no response but she’s getting closer, now with her chin up and still looking straight ahead. Straight past Mark. He furrows his brows. “Miss? Hello?”

He takes a few steps closer just to make sure she doesn’t miss him despite not knowing how she possibly can when he’s directly in front of her. Her sure steps don’t slow down, which causes Mark to falter and stumble back again in a desperate attempt to stop a forthcoming collision.

And he feels it. Not the impact of another body crashing against his, but of another body going straight through his. He could feel himself literally reverberating, rippling, ripping apart fiber from fiber, mass falling loose and coming right back up together again as nurse walks through, out and away, steps strong yet soft against the while tiles.

Mark pivots hard on his heels, mouth agape and ears ringing with white noise and raw panic.

She just walked through him. Not past him, _through him._ As if he wasn’t standing like a stupid, lost pole in the middle of the hall in his stupid, favorite gray hoodie and his stupid, abomination of orange hair. As if he wasn’t there _at all._

Mark looks down at his palms, opening and closing them, making sure they’re real and not a trick of light. Then, he uses them to feel his face and hair and trunk and shoulders... He’s real. _He’s real._ He can feel himself, albeit strangely light. But he’s _real._ Why the...

“ _What?”_

He pushes down the bile threatening to lurch out of his mouth but the panic rises anyway like a stupid reflex, like it’s the most logical thing his body can do in that moment, making his knees quiver and hands shake reliably.

He’s never had a scare as big as this since the days he was in the debate team. Or the first time he was onstage. Or whenever he stands before his dad, loosening his work tie with an accompanying disappointed face. Thanks to that experience however, he’s learnt a few tricks to get his nerves in check and not get it over his head. He has come to learn that all sorts of problems start with you losing control. You lose control, then you start to make mistakes, and then those mistakes lead to more mishaps like losing a debate and losing the championship, leading up ultimately to disappointing a lot of people who believed in you and your team and it’s your fault because you haven’t been a good leader. It’s your fault because you lost your cool, that you always let your nerves get the better of you, that haven’t been a good competitor yourself, that you tried and _failed_ and you knew you were going to and you...

Mark stops himself because even if he desperately needs a distraction at the moment, this proves to be a _very_ dangerous path to venture to, and that it’s doing the exact opposite of helping him calm down.

He racks his brain for any other possible explanation and decides, after awhile, that he’s probably high before he lost his consciousness and hasn’t recovered sobriety yet. Except, he never _got_ high before. He doesn’t do anything, never did anything in his life. He doesn’t even do cigarettes because the packages coated with images of different kinds of lung diseases you can get from consuming them are so _scarring_ that he never even entertains the idea of smoking no matter how much the other kids at university tease him for being so _paranoid, so uptight, this is why you don’t get laid.._. Even without the teasing he doubts he would because he can’t stand the smell of the smoke. Of _any_ smoke. He’s probably... there’s gotta be _something_ to explain this. He’s probably hallucinating. He’s probably dreaming.

Mark lets out a sharp yelp when he pinches himself hard on the arm, because that’s what they do in movies when they’re trying to find out if they’re dreaming or not. He looks around wildly, expecting to wake up on his bed or the cinema with the horror movie playing in front of him but there’s nothing but the mocking empty halls of his childhood nightmare stubbornly looming just as real as he is.

He turns around and the white wall stares back at him like a big, white bully under the faint light overhead. Like it has read through the idea in his brain and is egging him on to go with it. There’s one more way to tell if he’s dreaming or not.

Mark poises back, jaw cemented with purpose, and strikes at it with a curled, locked fist with all the strength he can muster. Then, he watches in horror as it disappears into the concrete where it should’ve been solid and the impact bone-breaking, a faint shimmer outlining around the base of his wrist.

Good news: no bones broken. Bad news: his entire fist just went straight through the wall.

Mark proceeds to scream his head off.

 

**II.  
** _donghyuck_

 

**_“I_** can already _hear_ the screaming of the damned souls in that haunted hospital,” Renjun chirps, cupping an ear and smiling expectantly. “Hear that? Absolute music to my ears.”

Donghyuck doesn’t, and he still thinks it’s never a good idea to visit a haunted hospital also known as the worst place to be haunted.

Renjun thinks it’s delightful though, whizzing about like a child when the proposition came up in his inbox as if he wasn’t this close to shitting his own pants during that one vending machine scene in _The Haunting of Hill House_ and all the other horror movies and shows before that.

(“It was jump scare! What was I supposed to do other than be scared!” Renjun says, defending himself. “Also you screamed with me!”)

Renjun has made a fairly good point and it will most likely scare the living daylights out of anyone but like so many good points Renjun has made in the entire duration of their friendship, it goes in and out of Donghyuck’s ears for the sake of their relationship’s smooth sailing. Same goes for Renjun too, evidently, so he guesses that’s fair when the act of ignoring good points goes both ways.

That doesn’t mean he can’t try talking some sense into his friend this time though because this sounds like a really, really _bad_ idea.

“No, it’s not. Because most of the ghosts there are of sickly and old people. They’re the gentle kind of ghosts.” Renjun protests—of course he does, because the moment you bring up the word _haunted,_ he stops listening to reason—and drives on. “Plus. We’re already on the way.”

But what does he know exactly? Sure, he’s devoted his free time looking up conspiracy articles and constantly conducting casual extensive research (“There’s nothing casual about research, you nerd!”) about the outer space and the supernatural but as Donghyuck _loves_ to argue, those things don’t automatically make him some kind of scholar of The Supernatural to know exactly which ghosts are benign and which are evil. Nobody’s ever the all-knowing in those kinds of things, heck, nobody even knows if benign spirits exist. Hence, the label “The Supernatural” due to the premise reaching beyond the standards of normal. But those kind of arguments are what Renjun _loves_ to ignore the most, _the strong kinds_ and he dismisses them like they’re no more than a kid’s dispute _,_ shimmying out of these by throwing himself off into Donghyuck’s arms and tugging him in a joking chokehold.

Donghyuck couldn’t exactly defend anything when he’s busy desperately grasping for air.

This time, Renjun dragged him into this without the choking, _the air pipe thanks to the Almighty_ , and managed to shove him into his car at 10pm after resulting to his alternative strategy of wielding his fluttering eyes and smooth words. It goes down to his advantage and woes Donghyuck to no end because exactly how did his resolve become so weak in the face of Huang?

“It’ll be fine,” Renjun says in his best reassuring tone. His slender fingers slide delicately along the steering wheel but still manages to look like he can save the world just by driving. “We can check it out, get some footage and if we’re both satisfied—”

“There’s nothing satisfying about this for me,” Donghyuck deadpans.

“—then we can both walk away before midnight.”

“Except that won’t be the case because you won’t have anything. We’re about to waste the next three hours of our lives over nothing.”

“You don’t know that.” Renjun snorts. “Also, still beats having to sit around in our apartment, rotting.”

“What’s so bad about rotting away? It happens to the best of mankind.”

“They’re _dead,_ Donghyuck. They should be rotting. We’re alive. Live a little.” When Donghyuck mimics his snort, Renjun throws him an annoying knowing side glance. “You can tell me you’re _scared._ I won’t judge.”

 _Of fucking course_ he’s scared but not for himself. The familiar weight of some salt in his pocket provides some comfort but even the number one evil-spirit repellant is not enough to extinguish his worries completely. It’s even more a source of frustration if those worries are taken as a weakness, as per Renjun’s patronizing looks suggest of his opinions of him like an annoying Renjun-brand jabbing at his pride. Donghyuck is left with no other way to vent effectively than by repeatedly snapping the car’s glove compartment open and close, filling the car with rhythmic clicking and letting the noise do the talking for him.

“Alright.” Renjun sighs when the snaps got faster and sharper and too unbearable for another minute. “ _Okay._ You can wait in here. I’ll go in without you.”

It’s Donghyuck’s turn to scoff. “And let you die in there and let you off the lease? Dude, I’m _not paying_ that apartment all by myself after your death.”

“That’s the spirit!” Renjun has the audacity to look pleased with himself. “Knew you’d come around. But we’re doing this with Jeno. Let’s go team!” He lets out a whoop, and grins as if Donghyuck had just given him his Christmas gift.

He might as well had, given he’s been moaning over the lack of excitement in the past few weeks and the only thing keeping him alive in the middle of the summer heat is the weekly Buzzfeed Unsolved videos. It’s a real pitiful sight, as Renjun tends to fall into a bleak state of existing, wallowing under detrimental amounts of cake and junk food. His trip back to China is not until next month, so until then, he has been wasting away to take advantage of the remaining weeks of his freedom before he’s back on his adult feet to convince his parents he’s a big-time, most responsible piece of shit the world has seen. (Renjun’s words. Not Donghyuck’s.)

“It looks sad but this is more gratifying than it looks Donghyuck,” he once said to him one day when Donghyuck caught him sneaking three tubs of ice cream into their mini-fridge, like a chipmunk stacking away acorns for winter. “Gratifying but brain-rotting. When will a zombie apocalypse happen?”

It’s hard to tell he’s the same overachieving, dean’s lister college student when he’s being a total nerd over these kinds of hardly-scientific stuff.

Renjun has been wallowing in the slumps halfway through _Doctor Who’s_ sixth series until an interesting post piques his interest and entices him with the perfect place to venture for one of his ghost hunting hobbies. It’s nothing to get particularly serious about, just a very passionate pastime of his other than conspiring over the Pentagon, their secret UAP facilities and their bogus announcement of closing them down when the institution is still being funded and operating covertly. (Oh _god_ , the things he learns from listening to Renjun babble about them.) He checks out any nearby site displaying rumors of paranormal activity and debunks them for the sake of debunking them, all the while basks in the very notion of actual demons teeming the place because he’s adventurous like that. In the past, Renjun has successfully dragged Donghyuck into his trips a couple of times, none deadly so far but some proved to be built around a nip of legitimate ground, judging by how brash the wind chimes shook around Donghyuck when his eyes couldn’t help but flit to the fraction of movement in his periphery at the shadows and how one particular bloodied kid rapped softly at a glass pane to get Donghyuck’s attention just when Renjun was walking out of the room.

Up to date, Renjun has unearthed a total of six sites of paranormal activity and debunked four of them. The numbers could’ve been lesser if Donghyuck hadn’t kept his mouth shut for the team’s sake because the last thing he wanted was to let any one of Renjun’s team gets possessed after they prod and fool around a few minutes longer. (Exorcism can take a _long_ time, he knew that from firsthand experience, and they aren’t pretty.)

This time, Renjun decides to check out a purportedly haunted hospital right in the next town and now, bearing the remains of his once-great dignity and the internal responsibility of keeping his best friend safe with him _,_ Donghyuck takes shotgun seat to a death ride. What fun. (There’s really _nothing fun_ about haunted hospitals.)

They drop off to the next convenience store to pick up Renjun’s boyfriend Jeno who’s always more than willing to take up the role of their cameraman. He’s upbeat as usual, flashing them his grin when the car pulls up and babbling animatedly as he shoves Renjun’s equipment to the side to stuff his own load of unhealthy snacks into the backseat. Before the car speeds off, he crouches over to peck Renjun on the cheek, his overgrown brown hair flopping over to partly obscure his vision, and nods at Donghyuck with one of his famous eyesmiles. “Yo,” he chirps, still being inappropriately cheerful in this situation. “He dragged you in again, huh?”

“Your boyfriend is a charmer,” Donghyuck says, wryly.

Renjun laughs and reaches over, mildly suffering Donghyuck’s hand swats that prevent him from pinching his cheeks. Jeno hands Donghyuck a bag of potato chips, a very Jeno-way of compensating and stretches his arm over to feed his boyfriend behind the wheel a chip.

“So, no Jaemin tonight? Just the two boyfriends?” Donghyuck asks, stuffing his face.

“Jaemin’s tired from cheer practice and can’t make it,” Jeno replies then adds a soft “ahh” as he feeds Renjun another. “He’ll make up though.”

Donghyuck crinkles his nose. Jaemin is usually the more sensible boyfriend among the trio and usually reins Renjun in better than Jeno when the Chinese get too out of hand. If he’d have to choose between resident cameraman Jeno and occasional cameraman Jaemin tonight, he’d go for the latter. Jaemin had at least the sensibility not to be overruled by _love_ when the situation gets dark in those haunted sites.

“Why, you miss him? Got a crush on our boyfriend?” Renjun teases, passing over a knowing look to him through the rearview mirror and like a cold, Jeno catches it, morphing his face into the same sinister shade and earning an exasperated groan from Donghyuck.

“When will you guys knock it off?”

“We have one more slot.” Jeno offers as if he’s offering a quick cup of coffee or free taste of grilled meat on a toothpick instead of an actual relationship with three more people.

Donghyuck scowls. “No, thanks.”

“We’re great kissers.” Renjun chimes in.

“Please shut up, you’re gross.”

The rest of the ride is spent in silence save for Jeno’s shameless playing of some acoustic tracks and in that duration, Donghyuck contemplates faking a diarrhoea to the serenades about heartbreak. He doesn’t push through his plan after the third song because EXO has convinced him not to go, and leaves his fate in the hands of the universe instead, hoping it knows he’s way too young to die.

Renjun is whistling as he pulls up on a parking spot in front of a hospital that looks very normal.

Donghyuck peers up through the windshield as Jeno begins to haul the cameras out. “I thought we’re going to a haunted hospital? This doesn’t look haunted to me.”

“Patience. We’re getting there.” Renjun crosses over to his side of the car and pops the door open for him, mockingly. “Back in 1968, this hospital burned down after a freak accident that cost more or less twenty lives. Two years later, the hospital shut down due to several reports of neglect and law suits popping up from every direction. It fell out of operation until ten years later, the hospital reopened with new management, still private as it were before, and restored its vitality. They built _this_ new building right here to start.” He points. “The old one, the supposedly _haunted_ one that got burned down and was never given a second chance to be restored is right out at the back. That’s what we’re here for.”

“There are several accounts of sighting by patients facing the structure, of kids and elderly roaming the halls sometime between 9pm to 3am. Crying, sometimes screaming and glass shattering can also be heard from the place,” Jeno adds, passing the cameras and flashlights around, one for each of them to hold, eyes shining with muted delight. Donghyuck dismisses it as a normal look on Jeno’s face. In his brand of boyish wonder, everything seems fascinating in his eyes, possibly even potential demon possessions. “Sounds intriguing, right?”

“Does it, now?” Donghyuck deadpans, ignoring Renjun’s eye roll at his tone. “Hey Jeno, tell me. How much is Renjun giving you for this?”

Jeno stops, deer caught in the headlights kind of way, and says slowly, “For being your cameraman?”

“For putting up with him in the last three years of your life.”

Jeno chuckles and gives him a wink. “His love is my only price.”

“Ah. Gross.” Donghyuck steps out, glancing over the car to the direction of the haunted site shrouded in darkness and it stares back at him like he’s an old friend. And as much as he likes to contradict the affinity that the dark seems to extend, he grits back his words and hopes for the silent variety of darkness to welcome them. “Let’s hope it’s old people souls in there and nothing else because _something_ _else_ usually denotes spirits who love lifting people and things off the floor and slamming them against walls.”

Renjun and Jeno laugh like it’s a joke to be laughed at and not a fact to be mulled over.

They go through a couple of things before tiptoeing into the ruins of the building, Renjun signing off a few things on the front desk to make their trespass on the unearthly legal, at least in human terms. Donghyuck leans against the nearest wall patiently and entertains himself by watching Jeno fidget with the gadgets and make sure they do their jobs once they start rolling. Minutes later, Renjun saunters over waving a slip of paper, probably the signed off permission slip, and pockets it. “You should think about playing the skeptic in this video, Hyuckie. It’ll make our dynamics more fun.”

“I’m already playing the skeptic.” He puts up a convincingly disgruntled face. “I’m skeptic of the purpose of our interference to the occult.”

Donghyuck fights off a hiss when he notices Jeno’s camera beeping a steady rhythm of red and already rolling at his face.

“We’re here to debunk rumors about this place. We couldn’t have been more specific about the purpose of these.”

Donghyuck lets the retort slide, knowing very well there are characters to fill now that the camera has started rolling. He puts on his best on-cam Donghyuck face, an indolent mixture of disinterest and disillusioned, wisecracks at his arsenal ready to throw Renjun’s way.

“Well then,” he snaps, staring dead straight at Jeno’s camera, “let’s get debunkin’.”

 

 

 ** _“Want_** me to hold your hand?” Renjun arches his brows, a gesture loud even in the dark.

Donghyuck sniffs. “This is why your viewers ship us hard even if we already made it clear you have _two_ boyfriends.”

Renjun’s snickers fill the corridor.

Three beams of sallow light flash through the pressing darkness up ahead, punctuated with the soft echoes of their footsteps, detritus of glass and dirt crunching under their feet. Thick, rigid air surrounds them like a bubble a few steps into the murky halls, but only sharpens Donghyuck’s gumption even more now that the distant noise has faded out and he’s left with nothing to distract them with.

He thinks if he pauses long enough, he may even feel the entire godforsaken building breathe and pulse with otherworldly activity. He thinks, as the musty stench of the building assaults his senses, it really is an old friend.

People fear the unknown. When curiosity ushers discoveries, fuels courage and occasionally leads to a few unfortunate accidents, it doesn’t taint the innate instincts of self-preservation. People are scared of the dark because of the ambiguity of what lurks in it and the potential danger that comes with it. Fear is normal and a part of humanity. Fear makes you fast, makes you fight better or flee the scene better when it comes to it. Fear is _good._

So what he’s trying to prove is... Okay, so maybe yeah, he hadn’t _entirely_ stopped fearing the shadows that prowl in the dark. Especially the kind they actively seek every now and then.

In Donghyuck’s time with Renjun’s debunking pastime, he had seen real things he rather keeps to himself to prevent furthermore poking around the places that prove to offer more danger than just whining spirits drifting about. There was no way he’s putting his friends in danger despite what these discoveries might mean to the reliably stubborn Renjun whose interest just seems to grow with each passing day. Donghyuck thinks his little hunting is okay at least, as long as he’s there by his side, sweeping pieces of evidence under the rug and seeing to it his friend only sees the things he needs to see before moving onto another place of suspicion and the cycle repeats again.

Those of which movements he couldn’t predict that had made itself known to the rest of the group before Donghyuck can stop it, he tries to play off as something insignificant through the combined art of sarcasm and skepticism. He’d do just about anything to lead Renjun astray and throw him off from clues that matter, to keep the two worlds separate as they should be.

He’d make sure to call the right people afterwards though, the ones with skills like his cousin Taeyong and his little exterminator team to take care of the particularly loud spirits they come across and leave it to them to do their jobs.

Every now and then, he’d wonder how long is it going to take for Renjun to realize what Donghyuck is doing or what he can do whichever happens first, but he had always hoped Renjun will grow out of this phase and will eventually lose interest. Or that every “paranormal” site under suspicion would turn into a deadlock where the best that can scare them is some mutant rat the size of a cat rather than an actual poltergeist screaming bloody murder.

When overgrown rats squeak and scurry into the abandoned rooms as they pass along, Donghyuck shudders at his last train of thought, long and crippling, and curses under his breath when the back of his neck prickles with static. He roams his eyes where the shadows seem the thickest and winces at the sight of the figures he works out, which may or may not be really there, and makes sure his camera doesn’t catch them in its lens.

 _Okay._ So yeah, maybe there _is_ something else in the dark other than charred cement. And it’s definitely more than just a mutant rat. That’s very lucky.

“So what’s the history here, Renjun?” Donghyuck tries to mask his rising anxiety, voice coming off soft and shaky, drawing Jeno’s concern glances to his way.

Renjun, who is a few steps up ahead, looks back and nods stiffly, as if just recalling he’s supposed to speak. “Right. Um. There might be more to the seemingly normal hospital that meets the eye. Back in ’68, a good part of this hospital used to be a transient asylum, providing services for patients from a few states, being the only hospital to offer it for miles.”

That’s really comforting information.

Donghyuck swallows thickly, feeling the start of sweat breaking out on his forehead. Their steps suddenly sound louder than they should be, with echoes of some that may or may not belong to theirs, yet nowhere as loud as Donghyuck’s pulse thumping in his ears.

They walk in a steady pace, Renjun leading the way and Jeno holding out their six in a much more sluggish pace to capture the entire scene inside his frame and to provide a common ground for the other cameras with strictly first-person point of views.

“There were reports of neglect that led to the fire claiming the lives of at least twenty patients,” Renjun says, waving his flashlight around and illuminating the lasting scorch marks of the fire and a few vandals on the walls. “Locals say these spirits still roam these very halls, unable to move on. There were also speculations that all of the patients are of the psychiatric ward, which might explain the random shattering sounds and the screaming.”

Donghyuck paints a ghastly picture in his head about floating things and thundering footsteps of crispy, crazy patients coming at them from every direction, clawing and biting and rabid with afterlife rabies. He shudders again. _Okay,_ that’s enough zombie movies during movie nights with Renjun & Co.

And as if on cue, Renjun comes up with the most brilliant suggestion that makes every horror movie ever thrive to last at least an hour more. “Okay, so let’s split up.”

Donghyuck stops in his tracks and shoots Jeno a bemused look over his shoulder, which he returns, possibly sharing the exact same thoughts about how this sounds exactly like how people die in horror movies.

“We can cover more grounds that way. It’s almost 12. We have the place only until then,” Renjun adds. “We’ll meet back here in half an hour.”

Before any of them has any chance to question his survival skills, Renjun tiptoes off and treads the hall to their right, mumbling softly to his camera and sweeping his flashlight from the walls to the floor.

Donghyuck scoffs in disbelief when the sound of his feet slowly dies away. “The scaredy cat left us.”

“Do you want to split up?” Jeno asks in an even tone.

“That never works in horror movies,” Donghyuck grumbles. “Not really. Do we have a choice?”

Jeno smiles. “I thought you don’t believe in ghosts Donghyuck?”

“I believe in leaving them alone if they exist, Jeno,” Donghyuck says at the camera, not entirely _just_ his character talking. “But let’s get this over with. I take this hall.”

“Be careful. You can scream. We won’t judge,” Jeno remarks with an easy smile and unclouded eyes.

Donghyuck makes a face before creeping down the hall he picked in light steps.

Their judgment is the least of his concerns right now.

Darkness stretches up ahead of him, small squares of faint light from the outside casts upon random parts on the opposite wall, but not bright enough to rely on. His eyes get used to the dark after repeated blinking and lets him see outlines of passages and doors in uniform distance apart from each other, some of them still have their wooden doors intact.

After a couples minutes of roving, he finds it’s one of the quieter parts of the hospital, having sensed nothing that raises flags in his dictionary. It’s a vandal’s sweet spot, though. Red and black spray paints outline various symbols and fill the sullied walls to every inch with admittedly impressive graffiti and scrawls of obscenity. Lots of them. The lower portions of the walls are decorated with stains of dripping muddy fluid which fills Donghyuck with disgust at the very thought of what those fluids might be.

“Stay in school, kids,” he mumbles to the camera as he lets it sweep the canvas of walls before him. “Stay in school.”

He slinks further down the hall, making sure his camera doesn’t miss anything besides the barrenness of a silent, uninhabited building with nothing more exciting things to offer. “Sounds quiet. No screaming, no chills so far. Knew it was a bust. Not even peaceful spirits coming out to say hi. Hi spirits!” Donghyuck calls. “I’m Donghyuck. It’d be great to meet you if you exist.”

The eerie silence suddenly seems a lot deafening than before. Donghyuck swallows his regret of calling out like that. Then laughs nervously, “See? It’s a bust. There’s nothing—”

A scream slashes through the thick silence and rings in Donghyuck’s ears, filling his veins with white hot panic when he recognizes the voice. “Renjun!”

He races back out to the main hall where Jeno dashes past him and up ahead to where the scream came from, huffing and yelling out Renjun’s name. He halts in front of double doors and lets his camera hang around his neck to push and pound on the locked doors, panic mounting in his voice. “Renjun! Can you hear me? Are you okay?!”

Renjun raps on the other side of the door. “Jeno! Jeno, help!”

“Jeno, it’s locked,” Donghyuck says, urgently. “We’re going to have to kick this door.”

Jeno faces him looking distraught yet dogged, jerking his head. “Renjun, get back!”

The boys poise and kick with both panic and adrenaline-induced strength. The double doors rip open with a loud boom, barely missing a stunned Renjun nearby on the floor gawking up at a dark hovering entity looming over him.

“Okay,” Donghyuck pants, blinking at the ghost thrumming with deep, cold and raw hate, “maybe it’s not so quiet after all.” He pushes past the momentarily frozen Jeno at the doorway and yells at it, “Hey!”

The entity turns to the flashlight pointed at its rotting face, sporting a half-surprised and half-aggravated look at Donghyuck’s interference. Half of its face has dried up rotten into the sinking dark holes of where his eyes should be, outlines of his gray bones jutting out from where the flesh should’ve been. Far, far uglier than the ones Donghyuck had seen before.

It screeches at them. And angrier, as it looks. Jeno stifles a gasp at the back of his throat.

“Stay back or it’s eternal damnation for you.” Donghyuck’s voice thunders above its snarling, a lot firmer and threatening than he thought, with one hand up in an attempt to will the creature down.

His confidence wavers right away though when he it comes crashing on him how awfully unarmed he is. This isn’t the first time he had an encounter with a deranged spirit—by the looks of this one in this case, it’s a poltergeist— and he has enough experience not to crumble upon the sight of an extra ugly atrocity, but there was always someone else in the room with him who knows how to deal with it. Usually, someone with a barrel of rock salt aimed at it and a finger pressing against the trigger. Donghyuck only ever learned the basics to warding them off and he couldn’t tell for sure if a simple sprinkle of the salt he packed in his pocket or a bluff is enough to subdue one this powerful.

Damn, he should’ve listened better to Taeyong’s random lessons about evil fighting over Sunday dinners. Or stolen one of his retractable iron pokers.

“You really don’t want to try me,” Donghyuck says with plastered danger in his voice, making a show of reaching out to his pocket where he stashed some salt. The poltergeist sneers warily at him, probably sensing the scent of his possible demise and begrudgingly glides away from Renjun. Jeno launches forward and heaves his boyfriend up on his feet, whispering hushed assurances to him in soothing tenor. Renjun looks pale and stunned, glazed over eyes staring up at the poltergeist in both terror and awe but otherwise unhurt except for a few bruises along his arm.

Donghyuck hisses under his breath. “Get the hell out of here!”

“What about you?” Jeno pants.

“Just go! I got this!” Donghyuck backs off slowly just as Jeno lugged Renjun down the hall, willing his hands to stop shaking as the poltergeist begins catch to onto his fear, growling as it advances. Not good. Time to improvise. “You know, Mr. Poltergeist, nobody likes Casper the _Deadly_ Ghost. A rude ghost like that is hardly tasteful.”

The poltergeist makes an unimpressed noise.

Donghyuck shrugs, throwing caution to the wind. “How do you like a bit of flavor?”

He flings the entire bag of salt at the spirit and it shrivels up in pain, howling as the grains burn and sizzle against its translucent flesh. Donghyuck doesn’t stick around to find out if that worked enough to do any real damage however, and bolts out of the room, speeding down the hall as fast as his short legs and bursting lungs can let him. Behind him, the poltergeist lets out a bloodcurdling shriek, in perfect unison to the sound of the entire floor’s many slamming doors and blasting window panes.

All Donghyuck can think of is _shit, shit, shit, shit, shit._

It’s bad enough there’s an angry spirit after him, he didn’t know it is _this powerful._

Donghyuck bursts through the doorway to a link of halls and darts to the staircase when the strangest thing happens. Halfway through, he feels chills wash over his entire body like he had run through a pall of ice water at one point into his run, and spots flaky, white wisps tearing over his skin as if he just broke through a thin layer of energy. He looks over his shoulder in bewilderment and gapes at the figure he just went straight through, a pair of familiar very human brown eyes boring straight into his.

“What...”

“Watch out!” the guy screams, throwing himself across onto Donghyuck.

Donghyuck remembers stumbling on his feet, arms around his waist, a painful impact to the ground and then he blacks out.

 

 

 ** _Donghyuck_** wakes up to a hospital room with an actual bed and neither hurling doors tearing off their own hinges nor angry poltergeists trying to kill him. Which is nice, because, from his inability to feel his legs, he can tell he’s in no condition to do some more running for his life.

Other than that, he feels fine. Nothing is aching, anyway.

He props himself up too fast, muttering curses at the light buzzing it causes at the back of his head when the door to his room creaks open and a glitzy pink head of someone he dreads seeing that night pops in for a peek.

When he sees him, Donghyuck puts on a strained smile. The guy heavily sighs of relief in response, slipping into the room with an expression shifting from concern to cold fury in a matter of seconds.

Donghyuck tries not let it get to him like it always does when he was younger and had the tendency to pull a stunt every now and then, but it’s been used to rein in Donghyuck so many times that his reaction is almost reflex, wither away like a crumbled autumn leaf in an amused kid’s fist the moment his cousin gives him that look. He doesn’t even question it, just as much as he doesn’t question his cousin’s presence and the beginnings of a lecture forming his mouth. He’s seen it coming, since he’s on call in case anything happens to Donghyuck, an arrangement both insisted and approved by his mom. Taeyong was exactly the right person to call when stuff like _this_ happens and if presented with a choice between seeing his mom and his cousin after an incident like this, well, he’d go for neither truthfully. But Taeyong, at least, is less likely to have a heart attack in the occasion of Donghyuck being rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night. He wouldn’t bet for a much more merciful lecture from him though since he is almost as bad as his mom when it comes to it.

To put in a fancier way, Taeyong looks like the calm before a storm.

Donghyuck bats his eyelash in a way that sometimes works when he was a kid. “Hey...”

Obviously, it doesn’t anymore as Taeyong’s gaze stays fixed on him, brows knitted and eyes searing as he skims over his form, as if every part of him has offended him in some way. “How are you feeling?”

“I feel okay,” Donghyuck truthfully says, then remembers. “Renjun and Jeno?”

“They’re outside.”

“Are they okay?”

“A bit shaken up but alright,” Taeyong says, a little irritated. “You want to explain to me what the hell happened there?”

Donghyuck bites his lip, carefully picking through his words. “Um... ghost hunting?”

“Is that all you got for me?”

“Yeah.” He clears his throat. “It was a ghost hunting on a building that has a ghost in it.”

Taeyong raises a brow, one simple brow and Donghyuck sputters out the remains of his acerbic wit, completely at loss for anything sharp to say because apparently, Taeyong can disarm Donghyuck with just one simple brow.

“A _dangerous_ spirit. Heck, it was a 50-year old poltergeist.” Taeyong corrects, sternly. Oh boy, here we go. “You are not supposed to be there. I thought I told you to keep your friends away from stuff like this!”

Donghyuck makes an exasperated, gurgling noise at the back of his throat. There’s nothing more irritating for him than to be blamed for something that’s entirely beyond his control, which unfortunately happens frequently. “Taeyong, believe me. I tried. Renjun just wouldn’t listen.”

Taeyong looks unconvinced. “You obviously didn’t try hard enough if you got dragged all the way here. What if you got hurt?”

“I can take care of myself.” His protest falls short, warmth dotting his cheeks when he realizes where he is right now.

“Right. That’s why you’re not here right now, lying on a bed.” Taeyong says, derisively. “What if _they_ got hurt?”

This time, Donghyuck meets his glare because it’s _him_ on a bed right that moment, not Renjun nor Jeno. “I wouldn’t let that happen.”

Bad idea. The offense doesn’t seem real until he catches his eyes.

“Donghyuck, you had one job. _One._ I told you to keep your friends away from places like this. You know well what happens when you don’t!”

“I didn’t expect we’d actually see a poltergeist tonight. I thought there’s nothing there at all,” Donghyuck moans. “If I knew, I would’ve done everything to keep them out of there. We would’ve gone somewhere else!”

“I told you to _stop_ them from hunting altogether. Who knows what kinds of evil you come across with the next time?” Taeyong’s face is scrunched up into a disappointed look, the worst kind of look that he and Donghyuck’s mom seem to pull off with relative ease. “What if that was something else? What if that was worse than a poltergeist? At times, a bag of salt wouldn’t be enough. What would you do, then?”

Donghyuck hangs his head, staring at a single spot on his sheets hotly. He admits it’s kind of dumb of him not to always expect the worst out of these situations, considering the kind of potential danger they’re facing. Considering the weight of the consequences if things went south in there. His friends’ lives. He should’ve come prepared with the right tools. Or maybe he shouldn’t have come with Renjun and Jeno at all. Taeyong had posted a very strong point and unlike how he does good points with Renjun, letting his get in and out of his ears has consequences.

Salt wouldn’t be enough all the time. It was his responsibility. He shouldn’t have taken any chances when he knows what’s out there. He shouldn’t have tolerated these trips _at all._

“You’re not prepped for this life Donghyuck,” Taeyong says in a softer voice, the way adults ease kids onto a harsh truth. As if it was one. As if Donghyuck is still a kid. “The best you can do is stay away from it and get your friends away as well.”

The discourse feels all too familiar and repetitive for him to know how it will go from here. Taeyong almost always wins with the sense and the point and this time around, Donghyuck is left with no substantial argument to counter. He deflates wisely. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

Taeyong’s shoulders ease up after, his posture appearing more relaxed but somehow still doesn’t lose the authoritative demeanor he’s notable for. Donghyuck thinks it’s from all the experiences dealing with things most people don’t know are real. You acquire the air of pre-eminence over the common man, especially when their lives depend on you on more occasions than one, even without them knowing. You hold yourself up in a way above others that comes with superiority. Also, Taeyong had been the most responsible kid in the family, upholding the tradition and seeing to it everyone is accounted for, taken care of and in one piece. It’s the kind of weight that shaped his squared shoulders despite what his flashy pink hair and catlike eyes might suggest otherwise.

“Hospital’s all clear now. We torched the remains in the graveyard a few blocks from there so it’s clean,” Taeyong says conversationally after a few minutes when he’s sure the message has gotten across. “We had a few reports in the past but we wouldn’t have thought the haunting is legitimate if it weren’t for you since there’s no particular casualty around the area. Just some unreliable eyewitnesses that might’ve been high or delirious. Or both, for all we know.”

Donghyuck snorts. “Guess you guys aren’t so thorough after all?”

“Please.” Taeyong huffs without heat. “I told you, it was low-key. Lower on the danger scale. Plus, we just got back from hunting a couple of djinns over at the nearby province last week.”

“’We’?”

“The usual gang. Johnny, Doyoung and Jungwoo.”

Donghyuck perks up. “Are they here?”

“Went back to the HQ for a bit while you were asleep. They’ll be here.”

A smile creeps up Donghyuck’s lips, despite himself. He had almost forgotten about the silver lining in the form of his favorite set of people that come with Taeyong’s presence. Johnny and his unbelievably tall figure and bubbly smiles, Doyoung and his chic coats and stories, Jungwoo and his soft laughs and gifts. Taeyong and The Golden Trio, as Donghyuck lovingly (yet secretly) refers to Taeyong and his own evil-hunting Co that pamper and hang out with him every summer ever since he was a kid.

“How did you know I was there though?”

Taeyong sinks onto the chair next to the bed, leaning his head back. The dark circles under his eyes display in full view under the white light. He looks more tired now that the tension has dissipated. “Luckily for you, Jeno thought of calling me. Even luckier, we were nearby.”

Okay. He takes back everything he said about Jeno being too smitten to function in a pinch because that clearly wasn’t what happened back there. “Thank _God_ for Jeno.”

Taeyong snorts but doesn’t comment further. “Your friends are worried about you. You should see them and do some explaining.”

Donghyuck frowns. “Should I tell them the truth about everything?”

Taeyong peels one eye open. “Not necessarily. You should tell them about the stuff they need to know about what happened then that’s it. Unless, of course, you can sit through the breakdowns and endless questions about the universe. Hopefully, that should keep them away for good.” Taeyong smiles slyly at him, and Donghyuck grins at the inside joke. Though at the back of his head, he’s pushing off the dreadful feeling that Renjun’s not going to hear the end of it. Oh no, he probably won’t, will he? He’s gonna be so pumped to have a psychic for a friend, _Donghyuck_ of all people, his best friend in the world. And he’s going to beat Donghyuck up after for not fessing up earlier. Oh god, it’s gonna be messy.

“You can go home in the morning.”

“I feel fine, I can go home now.” Donghyuck pauses. “Wait. Why am I here again?”

Taeyong pushes himself to straighten up. “Wait, you don’t remember what happened? You fell down a flight of stairs.”

“I did?” Donghyuck shrugs. “I feel fine.”

“Yeah. That’s the weird thing. You fell and broke nothing.”

“I’m _what?”_

“You’re fine. The doctor didn’t anything wrong with you but held you back just so you can rest.”

Then it comes back to him, tripping over his own feet and _then_ falling and feeling the impact of it. It should’ve left him with a broken arm or some ribs, but he wakes up as hardy as ever, as if he never fell down a flight of stairs in the first place. There are no visible bruises on his arms and legs that suggest he did. It _was_ weird. Given the circumstances, he knows it was enough to make even Taeyong scratch his head.

“Maybe I didn’t fall hard enough?” Donghyuck tries, but he knows he’s reaching. There’s no way he couldn’t have fallen hard enough. It was worth a shot though. All sorts of freaky things happen all the time to them.

“I talked with Jeno. He said it looked like a bad fall. When they rushed you in here, you were knocked out cold but that’s it. No concussions. No broken anything.”

“Huh.”

“If I didn’t know any better,” Taeyong says. “I would think your guardian angel saved you.”

Donghyuck expects a tiny sarcastic smirk on his face as he said it but when his expression reads genuine, he chuckles in disbelief. “But there’s no such thing as a guardian angel, right? I mean, we’ve never seen one.”

“Who knows,” Taeyong says, mysteriously, as if he knows something Donghyuck doesn’t. “It’s a big universe, Hyuckie. It has one job and it’s to surprise us.”

“You don’t even believe in angels.”

Taeyong gives him his patented, “are you done?” look and compels Donghyuck to just shut up. Then, Donghyuck remembers something else. There was something more to the impact he felt. He felt it, but at the same time, it didn’t feel as if the impact did anything to him. It was as if he fell on a cushion. _No._ Something cushioned his fall, something that embraced him just before he took a dive to what might’ve been his end. Something that felt there but at the same time, didn’t. Donghyuck remembers the white wisps, and then the pair of brown eyes that locked on his. The brown eyes he knew too well.

“Would you like anything to eat?” Taeyong looks up from his phone. “Johnny’s at McDonald’s.”

Donghyuck smiles at him.

Guardian angel. It couldn’t have been a guardian angel.

Last time Donghyuck checked—approximately a year ago—Mark Lee was no guardian angel.

 

 

 ** _As_** expected, Renjun and Jeno took the big revelation well enough for normal people. Perhaps all those delving into conspiracies had made their mind supple for the truth that half of what they believe in truly exists.

At least, that’s what he likes to believe but it’s a little shaky thought.

Renjun needed a moment, approximately twenty minutes of rifling through his notes and randomly yelling in triumph at the accurate pieces of his research about the occult. Jeno took it a little differently, perhaps more reasonably than Renjun’s crazed delight, speeding off to the nearest liquor store to buy them a few bottles of soju and a little too many boxes of pizza. He had eaten two boxes of it all by himself smeared with honey. (Which was okay no matter how gross it sounds, as it was his way to cope.)

Thankfully, they got through the divulgement of the supernatural’s factual existence without any major breakdowns. Though, Donghyuck had to tell them off several times whenever they start wildly looking around the apartment, expecting to find a lone spirit eavesdropping. The inevitable discussion followed after, in a much calmer progression now that the initial shock has started to wear off and the names and mental images of said entities were placed and provided context to. Once the couple had become well-informed about the general danger these creatures imposed, it was easier to convince them out of their little pastime.

And by _them_ , Donghyuck meant Renjun since he is usually the entire opposition. He didn’t put up a lot of fight when confronted with the concern this time. Donghyuck guessed it might’ve been because he had personally come face to face with a poltergeist that had the real strength to snap him in two. (Or maybe because Donghyuck said other more horrible things that a poltergeist may inflict on nosy humans.)

All in all, it went pretty well. It was an experience both Renjun and Jeno didn’t look forward to having again in the future, which is great since it meant no more ghost hunting. But that didn’t mean Renjun was any less interested about the whole thing that he was before because now, he had more questions than ever. Donghyuck had to whip out his old folklore books and correct bits that aren’t real for Renjun’s satisfaction and reference. It was better than having to answer every single one of his questions every five minutes. He made sure to skip out the major stuff that involves the war between the hunters and the demons and the constant threat of the Armageddon because there’s no use troubling the very open-minded Renjun with the end of the world business. Donghyuck doesn’t worry about it much either. It’s easier to stay out of it altogether and let the professionals take care of it themselves.

The following day, Donghyuck has the apartment to himself after Renjun went out with Jaemin and left with the promise of coming home late. After a final warning of not breathing a word about what happened, Donghyuck pulls the bath bombs and scented candles Doyoung gave him a few summers ago for a long, relaxing bath. He figures after that death-defying experience, he might as well spoil himself to make up for it. He sets up and lights the candles, filling the air of the sweet smell of roses in a few minutes. He usually prefers vanilla and sandalwood but Doyoung had insisted for him to widen his range of preference. Donghyuck doesn’t regret relenting because Doyoung had impeccable taste and the new scent that wafts in the bathroom makes him want to camp in there forever. He fills the bathtub next and pops the bombs, watching the soapy bubbles of fun spread across the water and steadily rise above the rim in fluffy clouds.

Donghyuck giggles to himself. Oh yeah. Self-care.

For the final touch, he brings his speaker into the bathroom and places it somewhere dry and steady, sighing contentedly as violin music elegantly spills from it. Not too long after, he’s wallowing in the luxury of warm water and bubbles with his eyes closed and mouth slightly apart, relishing the taste of heaven inside his bathroom and thinking “What could go wrong on this one fine day?”

 

 

 **III.  
** _mark_

**_Something’s_** wrong.

Mark paces around the room, teething at his fingernails. He traces his steps back through the tiny spaces between pieces of furniture that occupy the small unfamiliar living room and almost knocks his knees against the tiny coffee table in the middle. Almost. But it’s not as if as it can hurt him when he can literally go through everything. In retrospect, he finds it quite useless to actually maneuver around the place when he can walk a straight line without worrying about his feet.

He’s still getting used to being a ghost. Human habits, he finds interestingly, die hard.

That is, if he’s _truly_ a ghost now. It’s a little blurry on that one. It took him a few hours for the panic to subside and a few more to wrap his head around the fact that he’s _probably_ dead and the him that walks around now is his _spirit._ What else could it be other than he has become a disembodied spirit and the only reason why he still lingers is that he couldn’t move on until he finds out who or what killed him? Probably some mugger who wanted his wallet, or some drunk with a blunt knife who took one look at Mark walking down the street and thought the fucker with the orange head had to die for having an orange head. Probably not someone with a grudge, he knows that much. Unless there’s a sociopathic debate opposition team who plants grudge like hell which can withstand the course of the years, he can’t think of anyone who would hate him enough to murder him.

For the meantime, it was the logic he chose to go with to rationalize his situation until he finds a more reasonable explanation for his existence. Said choice of reasons lead to where he is right now, pacing around a small living room owned by two college boys where one is off to his boyfriend’s place and the one is in his bathroom for the last three hours with no signs of getting out.

Mark is panicking. Who hauls boxes of scented candles and a whole box of speakers into the bathroom and doesn’t come out for three hours? Who does that?

At first, Mark wouldn’t want to worry. He’s more absorbed running through every possible way of making his appearance in front of this guy and running best moves to weasel out of the worse situations. After hours passed by hiding behind his walls eavesdropping and collecting names on faces (the brunette with the blunt humor is called Donghyuck while the snappy blonde with the boyfriends is Renjun), Mark’s certainty solidifies when Donghyuck mentions his knowledge of the occult to his friend and lectures him the do’s and the don’ts. Considering the tone of ease in his voice the way he talks about it like he’s discussing world history, it’s safe to say Mark is in the right place to start.

But what if this Donghyuck guy didn’t really see him that night? What if this Donghyuck guy wasn’t really what he thought he is and that he couldn’t help him? Still, he needed to try, doesn’t he? No matter what the outcome. If it fails, maybe he can wait for somebody else to swing by the hospital and help him out.

Yeah. Right. That’s a plan.

Truthfully speaking, Mark’s immediate future rides on this Donghyuck guy. Doesn’t even know what comes next if he doesn’t take him in. Would he stay like that forever? Without moving on and just floating around in remnants of the person he once was? Would he rot or get sucked into hell after a while? Or would he morph into something more sinister like the old man in the hospital if he wanders long enough?

The more he thinks about it, the more he dreads the fact that his body isn’t what it used to feel like. It’s a lot lighter, more fluid, and walking around feels like treading through the sea at neck-deep water, fighting against the current to stay upright. Barely anchored on the shifting sand underneath, and every day he spends alone is like waiting for one strong gush that might just drown him.

He doesn’t want to be alone, not for a while longer. But even the plan to finally approach Donghyuck is looking kind of dark for the past few hours.

Donghyuck might be dying in there for all he knows.

Mark clicks his tongue when the clock strikes out thirty more minutes in the running. Donghyuck has officially been inside that bathroom for three hours and thirty minutes now, it’s almost noon. Three hours and thirty minutes is enough time for bad things to happen. He could’ve been drowning in his bathtub. He could’ve slipped in his shower and broken his neck. He could’ve died hours ago and Mark was just there, pacing his living room, counting seconds, naming ways to die in a bathroom in a short time and not doing anything at all.

Mark might be a spirit but he’s still got a human conscience that wouldn’t let him wait in peace. He’s got to take a peek.

With unsure steps, Mark sneaks to the bathroom door, licking his lips in mounting nervousness. (Seriously, he had always thought death would deprive you of human emotions, but he’s a jumpy ghost ever since he became one.) The hand he holds up to push the door slips right through, his entire body in after. His eyes dart wildly all around the candle-littered bathroom in search of a body covered in blood.

Instead, he finds him dipped in the bathtub with his head poking above water, wide-eyed with a small towel wrapped around his head. There’s an appropriately short, stunned silence when their eyes meet before Donghyuck screams.

And boy, can he scream.

A hasty yet sincere apology isn’t enough to soothe him apparently. Donghyuck screams in alarm one more time before Mark finally hops out through the door in dread, swearing to flee the apartment immediately and never to show himself to anyone again. Then, he remembers he’s a ghost that no one else can see except Donghyuck so he reluctantly dives behind the couch instead, in case Donghyuck steps out of the bathroom and decides he’s not done screaming at his face.

It takes Donghyuck five minutes to come out of the bathroom. He clears his throat, the sound crisp in the space and silence that it makes the crouching Mark flinch.

“Hello?” Donghyuck calls softly, voice searching. “You there?”

Mark lifts his head off his arms and dubiously turns to the side.

“You’re friendly, right? I mean, you didn’t look scary and didn’t try to attack me. And I heard you apologize. Sorry for freaking out.”

Yeah, that was kind of offensive. He didn’t scream like that when he saw the uglier ghost in the hospital. _It’s the hair. It’s definitely the hair._

Mark unfurls from the ball of himself and takes a bold peek at the edge of the couch. He sees Donghyuck in his bathroom, spying around the space. A few brown tendrils of his wet hair sticking out from under the towel around his head and little drops of moisture still dripping down his face and neck. There’s a smudge of white at the side of his cheek, which Mark can guess is a moisturizer.

“You can come out.” Donghyuck is eyeing one of the doors suspiciously. “I won’t bite. Unless you do, then, in that case, don’t come out.”

Mark slowly lifts himself off his knees and emerges from behind the couch, bracing himself for another scream to tear through the air. When it doesn’t come a second after, he gathers the courage to look at Donghyuck and finds the slightest hint of a smile gracing the corner of his lips. It’s weird, but Mark basks in the rush of relief that coursed through his veins because of Donghyuck and his shining, attentive eyes on him. _On him._ Not anything else beyond him.

Finally.

“You can see me,” Mark says dumbly. He doesn’t even beat himself up for saying it. He’s too busy feeling relieved, too thankful and too weak on the knees to even care because Donghyuck is looking at him, more looking at his _hair_ because it’s orange but it’s not startling kind of orange that toxic animals have as skin color to ward off predators, more of a mild brownish-orange but still bound to put bold questions marks on minds too. And then his eyes slip down at his face finally and ask all the questions he doesn’t.

“Yeah,” he says with utmost sincerity, still dripping wet from his interrupted bath. “I can see you.”

Mark calculates his odds of creeping him out more than he probably does with a shaky laugh and doesn’t like it, so he settles for a blatant, deep sigh of relief instead, ruffling hair. “Y-You don’t know me but...” He swallows. “I’m Mark Lee and I need your help.”

“Oh. And I’m Donghyuck Lee. Nice to meet you, Mark Lee,” the guy says slowly as someone would to a sedated lion he’s trying to keep calm. _Donghyuck Lee._ “But first things first.”

The flurry of the escape to his room to clothe himself first leaves Mark with a flush, belatedly realizing he was staring at another guy in his bathrobe. A little harder, when the fact that he just walked in on a guy in his bath comes crashing down on him like an avalanche. Being a ghost was no excuse to intrude, so when the guy in question returns with baggy clothes and a more wary expression, Mark starts to explain himself but lasts only a few syllables in before thinking better than to embarrass himself further. Donghyuck traipses over to the kitchen to grab a bag of chips and a cup of steaming liquid. He has kept an eye on Mark through the trip, more curious than suspicious peeking behind the brown fringe that sticks on his forehead before finally gesturing for Mark to sit on the couch as he sinks on the reclining chair on the other side. “Take a seat. Make yourself comfortable.”

Mark shifts in his feet in discomfort, throwing longing glances at the couch. “Um, I would sit but I can’t.”

“Hmm?”

“I just... I just go through the couch like it isn’t there.” _Or like Mark isn’t there._

“Oh.” Donghyuck scrunches his forehead for a bit in mild confusion, a fairly adorable expression on anybody’s face and surprisingly more on his. “That’s... unfortunate. For your legs.”

Not really. They don’t exactly feel things like they used to. “I don’t mind standing though.”

“Okay then,” Donghyuck says, passing a suspicious look at his legs. “So, Mark Lee. What brings you here? I have to tell you right out, I have no idea how you wound up finding my apartment. Finding _me_ , specifically.”

“I followed you from the hospital. You know. From the other night.”

Donghyuck takes it in with patchy slow nods but the way he looks at Mark doesn’t change under a new light of recognition. It’s the same as before, a little spark in his eyes but as if he’s putting on a show of working out his identity just now, but Mark can’t tell for sure. Maybe it’s just how Donghyuck looks at ghosts like him, with relative calm and cool because nothing in the world can truly surprise him anymore.

Maybe he’s been around a lot friendly ghosts like Mark, just as he’s been around scarier ghosts like the old man in that hospital. Mark was there that night. He marveled at how strong and dauntless Donghyuck looked as he stood his ground while his friends made a break for it. Even now, pulling off sweatpants and a black Michael Jackson t-shirt, he exudes the pliancy of someone who has seen uglier things than the angry old man and a permeating ghost like Mark.

“You knew me from _that_ night?” asks Donghyuck, which may have sounded a little bit hopeful for reasons that escape Mark.

He nods, dismissing it. “Yeah. I thought you can help me with my problem.”

For a split-second, Mark thinks Donghyuck’s expression falter into momentary disappointment but it vanishes the next second to be certain. “What _is_ your problem exactly, Mark Lee?”

“I think,” Mark forces down the frog in his throat, “I think I’m dead. And I came back as a ghost.”

Donghyuck nods, then nods again like he’s waiting for more. When nothing more comes forth, he keeps nodding. “Whoa,” he says. “Well, thanks. I certainly didn’t get that from the first time you walked through my bathroom door.”

Donghyuck snickers at him, cheeks lifting and squishing his eyes adorably.

“I’m _serious_.” Mark blushes full on this time, crippling heat creeping up from his neck in a way that he never knew possible for someone in his state. (But he can blush, that’s one discovery despite being no more closer to the understanding of his situation.)

Donghyuck clears his throat apologetically. “But, is that what you think? That you’re dead?”

“Maybe. I mean, what else then?” Exasperation rings loud in Mark’s voice, of his situation and of being laughed at barely five minutes into thinking he’s about to get the help he needed. “How could you explain all the stuff I can do?”

“What can you _do_ besides walking through walls?”

Mark opens his mouth but when he finds no words to answer the question, he snaps it shut. Huh. Come to think of it, he doesn’t know. At all. All he has ever tried was permeate through solid things and walls and levitating, obviously like _anyone else_ would if put in a similar situation, but it appears that he doesn’t have enough juice to glide through the air. Gravity still pulls him down with its evil, invisible strings even in the afterlife. Aside from his other newfound abilities and the illusion of his being extra light, nothing else feels extraordinary. He certainly didn’t feel like haunting and scaring the shit out of unsuspecting people he passed by, which should be number one priority of every ghost’s list, right? He didn’t exactly went through an hour-long PowerPoint presentation of How to Be A Ghost 101 to know. Plus he was too busy spying on Donghyuck and his friend Renjun to even test the boundaries of his current state of existence.

Donghyuck looks like he already knows the answer, eyes unbelievably round and playful, and his legs swinging listlessly off the chair. He eventually picks up on his silence, raising an encouraging brow that is almost smug in the right light. “Yeah?”

“I don’t know,” Mark answers, exasperatedly. “Look, I don’t know _anything_. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I need your help to figure out what is happening to me. What am I now and how did I come to this? I’ll appreciate it if you stop looking at me like I’m some amusing toy to you.”

This dampens Donghyuck happy-go-lucky vibe brewing to a considerable amount, the playful curl of his lips now pulled back to a thin line as he straightens up in his seat. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright I’m sorry I’m just...” Mark sighs. Coming off strong isn’t really his intention, it just came out without much thought but all feelings. “I just... don’t know what’s happening to me. Or if I’m really dead. Or if I’m just an ectoplasm or is this my spirit—”

“Ectoplasm is ghost slime, my dude.”

“—and I could really use your help right now.”

There’s a heavy lull, just the inaudible sound of Donghyuck’s thinking and Mark’s pleading ringing loud in their ears. It’s a contemplative kind of silence, both thinking about their next moves. Donghyuck probably considering, Mark indisputably bailing and never looking back if he had a choice because of the enough embarrassment he had himself go through. Because Mark is just _tired._ The past few days of wandering around not knowing what’s real and what’s not had taken its toll on him, and he feels more exhausted than ever, fighting off all those uncertainty and fears from swallowing him whole as people walk pass him as if his entire existence was nothing to the indifferent universe. He knows it was, but when he was... normal, at least he knows he’s a part of someone else’s universe, but now he couldn’t even pretend.

He was just starting to drift away from the sliver of what he used to believe in until Donghyuck and his eyes on his for a second in that hall, when Donghyuck turned to look and Mark looked back. That split second may or may not exist but Mark had clung to it badly. So badly that he wishes for Donghyuck to skip the questions and say yes.

Finally, Donghyuck breaks out the million-dollar question, tilting his head with wide, curious eyes. “What makes you think I can help you?”

This makes him lean an inch to the bailing option _._ Was everything he saw in that godforsaken place enough to make him beg on his knees for this guy’s help? Was it good enough? It’s like asking a baby whether it wants its mommy or not. The salt. The brave, domineering voice. The tenaciousness. That’s not a question.

“You can see me.” Mark answers, nipping the insides of his cheek. “I know it’s not a good enough reason but no one else can.”

It isn’t a good enough reason and after saying it, Mark just wants to take it back and say it again, phrase it again, give him a little bit more than that but Donghyuck’s eyes soften with clarity and it takes Mark by surprise because it certainly looks like what he said stroke a chord or two in him. He stares at him now as someone would stare at a taunting puzzle that has a lot of headaches to offer. Mark probably does. He’s probably giving Donghyuck one right now. Or he’s probably giving Donghyuck a reason to help him.

Donghyuck takes a sip from his cup, looking satisfied enough. “How long have you been like this?”

Mark swallows back a big ball of unease and relief. “As far as I can remember, three days.”

Donghyuck hums. “How did you get in that hospital?”

“I woke up there.”

“What’s the last thing you remembered before you became...” Donghyuck gestures at his body.

“Horror movie,” Mark answers on cue. “I guess I was supposed to see a horror movie with a guy in a yellow pullover.”

“Oh, horror movie. The irony.” Then, more silently, “Was it a date?”

“ _No.”_ Mark surprises himself with his razor-sharp tone, because for some reason that sounds _very wrong,_ then shakes his head as an afterthought. “I don’t think so. It didn’t feel like that.”

“Didn’t feel like that? Can’t you remember who you went with?”

Mark shakes his head, miserably. “No. I have a hard time remembering about my life. I remember feelings better. But the rest gets too blurry.”

It was a miracle he can still remember his name from the way his brain is fogging up right now. Like a kaleidoscope but instead of colors it’s information warping, merging, swirling, yet nothing that makes quite enough sense to resemble a blurry memory rooted somewhere deep in his mind. It would’ve been a lot easier if only he knew which people to ask about what happened to him but sadly it’s locked away in the safe of his mind even he has a hard time accessing.

Donghyuck leans back on his seat, lips puckering just slightly as his eyes skim the wall. “Huh. So do you think that dude you went to the movies with killed you?”

Mark thinks hard but ceases when the headache threatens to split again. “I-I don’t know.”

The recliner squeaks under Donghyuck’s shifting weight when he leans forward and folds his hands together. His tanned skin radiates faintly of rose fragrance and a hint of bubbles. _Too sweet._ And when he leans in, Mark can see the faint outline of eyeliner. He wonders if that was a remnant of yesterday’s venture or something he managed to put on in the short ten minutes he was in his room.

“Personal question, Mark Lee. Do you have any burning desire for revenge right now?”

Mark blinks. It could’ve been a joke, right? In the short time he knows of Donghyuck from all the sneaking around and talking to him in the last few minutes, he worked out he has a tendency for untimely and sometimes inappropriate humor. Revenge could be a joke in his book, for all he knows. But he is not smirking this time, and the faint twinkle of mischief in his eyes is replaced with steely concentration. The intensity throws Mark off for a little bit and makes him look away just so he can stop those eyes from drilling deep into his soul. “Um. No.”

“Hm. So you’re not exactly seeking to harm people.”

“No.” A little annoyed, “Where did that come from?”

Donghyuck reaches for the bag of chips and pops it open, offering it at Mark. He waves him off. The loud crunch of chips lightens up the atmosphere just a tiny bit. “Just thought I’d make it clear. See, Mark Lee, the thing is I know a couple of things about spirits. Violent spirits like the one at the hospital. I know salt can repel evil. Iron rounds for monsters with flesh. Dead man’s blood for vampires. I know the Bermuda Triangle is one passage to hell.”

Mark stills. “Wait, _vampires exist?”_

“And monsters, evil spirits and believe it or not, evil Santa. Not just ghosts like the one in that hospital. Not just you,” He says around the chips in his mouth, waving his hand around as if he’s only talking about some child’s distant nightmare. “It’s a big, mysterious world, man, way bigger and worse than you thought that we’d rather not tell the world for its safety and sanity. My instincts say you’re not an evil spirit or a monster or a vampire, Mark. You’re just... a lost spirit. Not even a violent one seeking revenge.”

 _Vampires exist._ This couldn’t get any weirder. Mark shoves another limbo for next time.“That’s a good thing right? I’m not hurting anybody. I’m not even thinking of hurting them.”

“Not exactly a good thing for you.” Donghyuck shrugs. “If you’re clean, then I don’t know how to help you.”

His face falls. “Oh.” _Oh._

“But I might know a few people who can,” Donghyuck says. “They’re good people and better than me when it comes to these things. They can probably help.”

“Did you mean the guys that took you home?”

Donghyuck frowns. “Oh. Yeah. Those guys. How did you know?”

The tall guy and two others simply walked past him to get to the vending machine outside Donghyuck’s room in the real hospital. They were talking about some patient buried in the nearby cemetery and torching the remains... whatever that meant. Mark shakes his head. “They can’t see me. And for some reason, you’re the only one who can.”

“Yeah. I know the reason why. I have the gift of sight. _Otherworldly_ sight. I can see things normal people can’t.” He finger-guns at him. “And you, my friend, are the first clean spirit I’ve seen ever.”

Mark blinks again as his head spins and struggles to catch up with all these new information jammed inside his brain. It feels like learning a new equation in high school after a week of all-nighters, and your brain struggles to make sense of everything as a whole so it needs to pick through it piece by piece.

It’s safe to say he means _the third eye_ but doesn’t want to say it out loud. But... “Clean spirit?”

“Yup, you’d be glad to know you’re squeaky clean. Too clean for spirits that usually stick around because of some unfinished business. Those people who don’t, usually just move on to purgatory.” Donghyuck snorts. “At least, that’s what the adults say. It’s one part of the lessons I have a hard time believing. Heaven. Purgatory. Hell exists though, but the two? Who knows.”

Heaven. Lessons. _Too clean._ Mark is too clean to be a lingering ghost. “What do you mean I’m squeaky clean? Like, I wasn’t seeking revenge on the person who killed me?”

“It means you have no stains of regret, hate nor anguish when you died.” Donghyuck squints thoughtfully at him and nods to himself. “It’s safe to assume you weren’t violently killed.”

Great, so no sociopathic debate opposition killed him. That’s somewhat a relief. “Then, how come I’m still here?”

Donghyuck hums as he searches Mark’s face. He’s been doing it a lot in the past few minutes, staring at Mark’s face like he’s trying to commit every detail of it in his memory, which is considered weird in normal circumstances but nothing about this is normal. Besides, he can almost hear Donghyuck’s mind whir in action as he does it so he lets it be despite his slight discomfort if it helps him think.

“This doesn’t add up... You weren’t violently killed. If you were, you would be bound to the place of your death, or on rare occasions, to the murder weapon. You would’ve gotten this immense hate inside you and I would’ve seen it. But no, you don’t. You’re not bound to anything. You can walk through walls anytime you want, leave the hospital and burst into my bathroom, stuff like that. _Why are you still here, Mark Lee?”_

On the spot, Mark can think of a couple of reasons. He’s not ready to die, let alone move on. In the past few hours, he was only forcing himself to get over the fact that he died just to get it over with but the truth is, it’s not a pretty thought to deal with. Especially when he doesn’t even know how he died. He might not remember much from his time in his flesh, but he can tell getting killed before he can achieve anything in his life, _this young,_ wasn’t a part of his plan. If he’s a clean spirit who’s still there, he might still be holding on to his humanity.

He’s _still_ holding on to the off-chance that he might still be alive.

“Do you think I’m really dead?” asks Mark quietly. Sick of pretending he got everything figured out when half the time he’s winging it, blindly hoping for the best because unlike what others love to think, he doesn’t have everything in his life planned ahead, _thank you very much_. When this time, he doesn’t know what to do and he’s left with his best shot that is Donghyuck Lee whom he barely knows. But that’s alright. If there’s one thing Mark managed to bring with him from living, it’s his faith.

And he plans to put it entirely on Donghyuck Lee with his intelligent deer eyes, smudged moisturizer drying up on his cheek and MJ t-shirt.

Donghyuck sighs, the most weakness he has shown in the whole time they’re talking and gazes reflectively at his bag of chips. It hits Mark for the first time that maybe Donghyuck is about as lost in this situation as he is. This isn’t something that happens every other night or on occasion. It’s probably the first time Donghyuck has heard of it.

“I honestly don’t know what to think,” says Donghyuck, verifying his suspicions. “You’re _not_ a common spirit but that’s as far as what we know. Whatever you are, we might as well find out.”

“So you’re going to help me?” Mark perks up visibly and gets taken aback when he sees Donghyuck grinning at him, all too willing, all too bright for someone with a burden like his.

“Mark Lee with those big eyes of yours, you’re leaving me with no other choice,” Donghyuck says good-naturedly, like he can save the world with just a few words. “Let’s go eat something first. I’m starving.”

 

 

 ** _The_** first thing Donghyuck does after cooking himself some omelet is make a few phone calls. First to Renjun urging him to stay one night over at his boyfriends’ flat and the next, leaving a voice message to someone named Taeyong.

“He’s my cousin. He can probably help us but he’s out there hunting,” Donghyuck answers his unspoken question and steps back into the bathroom with an armful of laundry and not the picture of eagerness to jump into Mark’s situation. But that’s okay. It’s not like Mark’s in a rush or anything. He’s just glad someone is on it and someone can actually _see_ him now. “ _Again_. They just got back. Would a few days break kill them?”

“Hunting what?”

“Evil.” Donghyuck sniffs a t-shirt from his dirty pile and grimaces. “The usual stuff.”

Yeah. The usual stuff that no one else in Mark’s world has actually heard of and done. Even if Donghyuck said it’s a bigger, worse world than Mark thinks it is, he still can’t paint a proper picture of how fighting off evil monsters and evil Santa is considered a normal thing in someone’s life. Where being in constant danger is as mundane as getting your quarter eaten up by a shitty vending machine at the cafeteria. Like, _aw bummer. Oh well._ It’s harder to picture when there’s no clear indication of such lifestyle in the apartment that he lives in. Mark takes it in for the first time as Donghyuck busies himself with his first batch of laundry and finds it cozy and fitting for two college students with a rather modern, stylish look to it. A tiny cross hangs off the wall and a few paintings, a miniature low-maintenance cactus sits on top of the small coffee table with a collection of magazines below it. _Too normal for someone so extraordinary_.

There’s too many questions bubbling inside Mark’s mind but significantly less chances to confront Donghyuck with them when he’s busy disappearing into his bedroom and stepping out with more enormous books than he can carry in one trip. When he finally decides he has enough, he flops down onto the couch and starts digging his nose in between the dusty pages of the yellow-paged books with weird symbols stamped on its pages.

Mark peers curiously over his shoulder, careful not to breathe too close to his direction. (He doesn’t really need to breathe but he does it because of human habits.)

“These are basic books about spirits and stuff,” Donghyuck tells him, pointing at illustrations of what looks like the world’s standard picture of the Grim Reaper, black hood, scythe and all, and another dreaded, cartoonish picture of an apparition with a curvy, slender end to its form. “This is a poltergeist. The one we faced at the hospital. Its weaknesses involve rock salt, like any other evil spirit, and for the peskier kind, a bundle of crushed garlic and some lemongrass.”

Mark nods. “Sounds delicious.”

Donghyuck laughs softly. “Welcome to the Other Side of the World where you fight evil with condiments and herbs. Maybe one of these books can help us find stuff about your condition.”

“Why salt though? Why not, pepper? Or paprika.”

Donghyuck gives him a look that might’ve meant he likes his sense of humor but doesn’t want to admit it. “In different cultures around the globe, salt is a symbol of purity. Thus, it’s widely used to ward off impure things like demons and ghosts. Pepper comes in handy in other situations, you’ll be surprised.”

At this point, Mark is compelled to believe just about anything. Salt warding off evil? Okay. Pepper permanently disarming witch-voodoo? Great. There is such a thing as the Lochness Monster? Why not? Aliens have been living in the sewers and are probably spying on you while you shower through the pipes? Sure!

There’s a wide assortment of books of all heft and age laid out in front of them with topics ranging from black, leather-covered Supernatural 101 to battered Strange Cases of Leonard Van Halen.

( _“Van Halen?”_ Mark’s pretty sure that’s a rock band.

“It’s a cover name. He’s a legend in the hunting world. He prevented one undoing of the 66 seals _by himself_ back in 2000 so the Jubilee 2000 became a celebration of two things. Astaroth is one slave that wasn’t liberated.”

Mark blinks. Donghyuck’s enthusiastic smile falters. “Never mind. It was a huge deal for us.”

Donghyuck makes it sound like they’re living on a different planet.)

Among the many things Donghyuck has scattered all over the small coffee table is a folded blackboard. Mark points at it. “You have an Ouija board.”

“Yeah. Handy for sleepovers. Effective icebreaker.”

“You use Ouija board for fun?”

Donghyuck shrugs, reaching for another book from one of his piles and skimming through the table of contents. “It’s not exactly fun when you can see the spirits move the glass around.”

“But isn’t that dangerous?”

“Only if you don’t have me around,” Donghyuck says haughtily, then waves him off. “I don’t let the other guys use it at all. But it doesn’t hurt to have around just in case something like you happens.”

“Something like me.”

“ _Someone._ And we’re going to use it later.” Donghyuck looks back down at this one pocket-sized, hardbound book that has a crimson cover, so deep that it’s almost brown. Mark is about to ask him about it when Donghyuck interrupts him with a whoop, grinning back up at him. “Let’s play Ouija.”

Donghyuck slides across the floor to a clearer space a few inches from his book stacks and spreads the board out in front of him, reaching behind him for the small glass that looks suspiciously like a shot glass. He beckons Mark over and points at the opposite space. “Sit there. I’ll show you a neat trick. I know you want to sit on a couch and lay on a bed so badly.”

He doesn’t even bother to mask the teasing in his smirks as he cocks his head to the side, an expression similar to a numerous times Mark caught him staring from the corner of his eyes whenever Mark longingly eyes the couch or any chair in the vicinity. Mark just thinks it would be nice to sit on anything again instead of just dropping straight down onto the floor. It’s not a request exclusively from his aching knees and legs (because they don’t) but it would’ve been nice to at least settle on some place without standing around looking like a, well, a ghost out of place.

Mark obeys, though grudgingly, crossing his leg over the other and looks up at Donghyuck expectantly. The distance between them is alarmingly lesser than he had originally thought, a little too late a discovery now that his companion’s attention is entirely on him and any movement of hesitation might be taken personally. So he sticks and tries not to stare too long at his almost fluffy cheeks or look too uncomfortable at perpetual twinkle in his eyes on him.

“Think fast, Mark Lee.”

Mark squeaks when Donghyuck tosses the book in his hand onto his head and flinches at the flying projectile soaring straight to his eyes. It sails through him with a shimmer rippling across his figure in its wake, toppling open-paged on a spot in the far corner of the room.

“Hey!” he yells. “What did you do that for?”

“For science. _Okay_ , so you can’t touch things and things can’t touch you.” Donghyuck chirps, answering his question with a flash of his bright teeth. “Do you know how spirits can lift things with their minds?”

“What...”

“They can throw things of ill will. You see, the hatred fuels their being and their power, making them do things like shake an entire room or smash you against walls with just their minds,” he says. “Now, apply this principle to your situation. We’ve established you don’t have the spite to move or touch things but if we filter it from our equation, what else do you and those evil spirits have in common?”

“We’re... spirits?” Mark asks, dumbly now that he realizes how it sounds like.

Donghyuck widens his smile, looking mildly amused at him as if he’s just a silly, silly kid groping at something that right in front of him. “Aside from that, Captain Obvious.”

Mark shrugs, a little annoyed at these puzzles but more at himself for letting that smile appease him so easily.

“You have the _want_ that can be augmented into a much more powerful force.” There’s a short, waiting pause. Donghyuck sighs at Mark’s expectant face. “Basically, you just have to _want_ to touch something desperately to actually touch it.”

“Yeah, right. _Obviously_.” Mark mumbles.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Ehem. So, that’s it? Just unadulterated want?”

“It’s a hunch but it’s worth a try.” Donghyuck taps the overturned glass on the board. “Start with this.”

Mark reaches a finger and presses down at the bottom of the glass. His finger plunges straight down.

“The key is focus on wanting to touch the glass, Mark Lee. Pure thought may not work when you were alive but it might now.”

“Okay.”

 _The key is focus. I can do that._ Mark sucks in a breath and steers his mind into wanting nothing else more than to touch the glass. In contrast to what he previously thought, it proves to be a chore shoving away all of those piles of other desires and repressed emotions coming at him from every direction now that he’s paying attention. To speed things along, he improvises and pictures himself digging deep, clawing at the pits of his psyche and feels a puncture tearing through the surface. Heat rises from the pit of his stomach, spreading out thickly across his chest like warm, heavy tar. Mark’s head begins to buzz a steady rhythm, and he pushes himself another time to give it a shot. His finger, for the first time in days, hits something solid and his breath hitches when he recognizes the familiar surge of cold and firm crowding his tactile sense. He gives the glass a slight push across the board.

“Whoa. I can’t believe that worked.” Donghyuck blinks in pure awe, then chuckles. “Feel good about your newfound ghost powers, Mark Lee?”

“Nice.” Mark lets out a short laugh of disbelief, then drives the glass to the _YES_ inscription on the board. “How did you know about that? You’ve never done this before, have you?”

The grin Donghyuck flashes him is different from his sly ones so far; it’s bright, easy and proud, almost akin to childish pride that says he deserves a generous, loving pet on the head. (Which Mark _could_ imagine he would appreciate though.) “Nah, first time. I have a whole arsenal of the world’s mightiest weapons, Mark Lee.” He pats one of the bigger books around him and his eyes shine with pure delight. “All we need to do is learn how to use it. This should be an easy one with the right books.”

If Mark had his doubts a second ago, he’s sure that smile had burned them off his brain.

“Sitting on the couch may be a lot harder, though,” Donghyuck remarks, shooting up. “Better get practicing.”

Renjun the roommate doesn’t come home that night so they spent the next hours hunched over books with a couple of fastfood leftovers strewn on the floor in the quest to find significant information that can help Mark’s case. Taeyong didn’t call back too, but it wasn’t a huge surprise for Donghyuck knowing well his cousin doesn’t check his voicemail much on the job. Instead of helping dig through volumes of ancient tomes, Mark plays with tarot cards upon Donghyuck’s insistence. Not the actual fortune-telling, but just dealing the deck to practice touching in a higher level with thin, elusive materials.

(“You also do fortune-telling?” asks Mark to tear his frustrations from unsuccessfully maintaining a grip on the cards that has now spilled all around him on the floor. He tries to ignore Donghyuck’s laughing at the side over how he looks like a kid pouting over his spilled cards, but it’s hard to resist it when it’s sanguine and infectious. Mark could really use some of it right now.

“Nah,” Donghyuck answers, throwing him a cryptic look over the mess of books. “Or do I?”

Donghyuck, Mark finds, loves playing with his feelings.)

By the end of the day, Mark can finally sit and lay on the couch with minimal brain power needed.

In between practices and research throughout the day, Donghyuck throws him random questions to help jog his memory about anything before he woke up in that hospital, to which he answers the best he can through a muddle of hazy memories. He pulls out a vague mom and a dad and a brother, but no names that match the faces. There’s some hit and miss bits about him studying law at some prestigious university, his favorite movies and comics, knowing how to play the guitar and enjoying rapping as a hobby but none too significant, none of use to his condition.

When he confides Donghyuck this, he perks up at the mention of Mark rapping. When Mark firmly refuses to give him a quick demo, he falls into another one of his “Looking at Mark Like He’s a Very Interesting Alien Life form Under a Microscope” that makes his skin crawl. Like he’s looking at something equally confusing and revolting, or something in between. Perhaps a leftover pimple from where he had it when he was alive or perhaps it’s the orange hair. Considering either makes Mark think twice about more wanting to know about it.

But if there’s anything Mark about Donghyuck that he finds close to appreciating after the first day besides the fact he took him in, is the bright smiles he wears that declare everything is going to be fine. Mark values them more than he’s willing to admit and his chest floods with warmth for annoyingly inexplicable reasons.

Maybe it’s because he’s the first human to actually shower him with attention and talk with him, or maybe it’s the fact that Donghyuck is basically his one and only chance of figuring stuff out about what happened to him. Maybe it’s just because Donghyuck has a really, _really_ nice smile.

Mark tries not to think about it and forces himself to focus on Donghyuck yawning instead halfway through telling him about tomorrow’s agenda.

“Sorry.” Donghyuck rubs his eyes. It just hit 10 pm, pretty standard time to go to bed when you’re a teenager and after a whole day of staring at eye-crossing symbols and texts. “Didn’t find anything helpful other than we need to keep you away from salt because it can still affect you even if you’re not out to get anybody.”

Mark nods fervently. Okay. No salt, no problem.

Donghyuck lifts a few books off the floor and places them on the coffee table in decent stacks. “Taeyong texted and said he’s off to a few towns over and won’t be back in a few days. We can check his place out though, see if we can find something useful because none of my books are any help.”

“Okay, sounds great. You go get some rest first.” Mark says, getting up from the floor with the ease and grace he couldn’t achieve when he’s still in flesh.

The next thing happens so fast, Mark has barely enough time to react accordingly. One moment, Donghyuck is just getting up, yawning and taking a step and the next thing he knows, a stack knocks off into an avalanche of heavy books onto the floor. His reflexes fail him when his wobbly cramped legs couldn’t hold the weight of his slanting body and he yelps when they give out, flailing when he jostles forward and onto Mark’s direction. Donghyuck falls onto floor in a loud _thump,_ his groaning muffled.

Right under him with tangible arms wrapped around his frame is Mark gaping in total shock. A moment later, Donghyuck completely falls onto the floor in a softer huff and a burst of white, glinting flecks, landing face-down on the carpet.

“Wow.” Donghyuck groans, louder now that he has successfully peeled his face off the floor and rolls over to his side. “That was a rollercoaster.”

Mark materializes a few meters away, bewildered. Donghyuck begins laughing at his probably-priceless expression. “You did it again.”

“Huh?”

“The one you did back in the hospital,” says Donghyuck, sitting up. Looking up. “You saved me back there.”

It comes back to him, the similar feeling he had when he wrapped his arms around the warm Donghyuck, tucked his head in against the crook of his neck to shield him as they fall down together. A feat he thought he’s certain he couldn’t do but just had to, nonetheless. _He needed to,_ that’s all he remembered thinking and acted blindly on.

He realizes it was possible because he _wanted_ to save Donghyuck from the fall. “Yeah. Yeah, I did.”

“Knew it. Thanks for that,“ says Donghyuck in the most genuine tone of voice he has heard from him that day. And with another soft smile, he says. “Let’s turn in for the night and be up early tomorrow.”

“Donghyuck, I don’t think I sleep.” But Mark can try. God knows how much he just wants to bury his face in a fluffy pillow and make a burrito out of him and lots of layers of blankets, fall asleep and never wake up—actually _no_. He’s shouldn’t try. Who knows what will happen. “It’s alright. I can clean up here. You go sleep.”

“Oh look at that, heh. Casper Lee wants to clean up.”

“Ha-ha.”

Donghyuck chuckles softly, but too groggy to sound remotely teasing, and crawls away. He gets up on his feet once he reaches his own bedroom and squints at Mark over his shoulder. “You sure? You clean up?”

“I’m sure. Good night.” Mark says. “And um. Thanks.”

He scoffs, but his eyes twinkle appreciatively. “Don’t thank me yet, Mark Lee. We still got a long way to go,” says Donghyuck as he disappears into his room.

More books fall stifled on the floor as Mark stumbles and hits the table, his hand gripping his head hard that feels like being crushed under tons of weight. It feels too tight and feels like it’s breaking apart. His vision swims and his ears fill with jelly, a familiar voice humming at the back of his head, prevalent above the howling pain.

 _“I’m sorry, Mark,”_ pleads the voice, ringing desperation and regret at the same time. _“I really am. It’s all my fault. Please wake up.”_

Then he remembers his brother, Jaehyun.

 

 

 ** _If_** you’re a ghost, you’ll find sneaking into any house is easy enough. The thing is Mark didn’t think they need to sneak into anywhere before he agreed to come down with Donghyuck to Taeyong’s house to use his library since he wields the key to the front door and to the library, where they should be. Except the key to Taeyong’s “secret room” which he appears more excited about than the library itself. It’s even more suspicious when Donghyuck starts fingering niches and pulling down candles on the walls and random books tucked in the huge shelf that was propped against the wall. When he couldn’t achieve what he’s trying to, he pouts at Mark, batting his eyes at him. An action that Mark finds is just as disarming as his words and smiles, and a harbinger of an evil plan.

“Will you please pass through this wall for me and open it from the inside?” asks Donghyuck in an impossibly, slightly higher pitch than what is called for.

Mark blinks at the wall. “There’s a secret room? Like, in the movies?”

Okay. That’s proper cool.

“Yeah, Taeyong is classy that way.” Donghyuck answers. “What lies beyond this wall is a place far greater than his already great library. You’ll see. Now come on, wiggle that door open for me.”

Mark inhales but doesn’t bother actually concentrating because he doesn’t need to. He floats right through the thick wall without much fuss other than the usual; his entire body flowing through like water through cranny, and out on the other side as a whole.

Once inside, his eyes bulge at the arrays of weapons that greet him, hanging off the wall where three planes obtrude and joint together at the middle. It has enough space to cram in a bunk bed at one side, a small sink and a desk. Up above, a ventilator shaft filters the oncoming light and air from the outside with its rotating blades. Strapped over it is a huge pentagram made out of interwoven wires, embellished by symbols Mark can only guess what for. The floor mirrors the design in red paint but bigger, coating the outlines of the circular room. Up front, an alcove curves deep into the wall where the rifles and the shotguns sit, white light lining the bottom to illuminate a low, steady lighting. On each wall hangs different shapes and kinds of knives and bomb shells, silver and iron bullet cartridges, jars of what looks like salt, holy water, rosary beads—a lot of it—and bibles. Wooden stakes of different shades of brown form a row on the floor, jutting upwards threateningly at Mark.

“All of Taeyong’s more important and valuable books are stocked in here somewhere. I figured a problem this advanced would warrant a quick trip in here.” Donghyuck tells him after he lets him in through the crevice that outlines the shelf on the other side of the wall. He gives him a thumbs-up before diving into one corner of the room where a smaller, more compact shelf sits in the recess of the wall, cradling important-looking, older books than the ones found outside. “Oh and uh, welcome to an actual arsenal, Mark Lee. I recommend you don’t touch anything if you don’t want to perish.”

He takes one look at the stakes again and shudders. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m no Sleeping Beauty.”

When Donghyuck looks at him funny, he explains. “You know, the fairytale? She goes into this tower and touches the needle?”

“Ohhh. Right.” Donghyuck frowns. “Why would Sleeping Beauty even want to touch a needle?”

“To be fair, she was cursed to blindly touch it.”

“Oh, well, glad you’re not right? Don’t touch anything or else perish.”

“You know so much about lores and monsters and how to kill them,” Mark comments. “But you don’t know much about fairytales.”

Donghyuck hoists up a shotgun off its rack with much reverence, throwing an awestruck look at Mark akin to a kid holding up his first ever toy gun. “You tell kids fairytales, Mark Lee. Plus, you don’t find stuff like _this_ in fairytales. There’s really no competition here.”

Mark rolls his eyes.

Donghyuck hesitates, then clears his throat. “Though, I have to say, that Ariel girl is pretty ballsy and Elsa has the best dress.” The look Donghyuck gives him makes him want to smack himself upside the head. “I was a kid once, geez. I know the classics.”

And apparently the newer ones too, seeing that he liked Elsa’s dress best.

His eyes wander back to the armory. Mark didn’t really think too hard about the whole fighting the evil business he knows Donghyuck’s family is into, but he doesn’t quite expect the heavy reliance on normal rifles and bombs. He’d imagine rosary scapulars, bibles, Latin incantations, holy water and that’s about as far as his imagination has taken him. When Donghyuck explains the guns and compressed salt as bullets instead of actual ones, Mark laughs under his breath.

“What?”

“You have a pretty badass family.”

Donghyuck shrugs. “Eh. It’s not just mine. Who knows how many hunters are out there protecting the world from evil. We couldn’t take all the glory.”

Mark looks down at the map sprawled in front of him, dotted with red Xs that even Donghyuck doesn’t know what meant. “Why didn’t you join in the family business?”

There’s a slight pause, and a rustle of a huge page being turned before Donghyuck hums lightly. “It’s not my life. Sure, it’s my family’s, passed down from one generation to the next but I don’t think I can take on the responsibility. I have enough weird things going on as it is.”

Assuming he meant his sight, Mark chuckles softly. “Yeah, you had to deal with ghosts like me.”

When he finds Donghyuck smiling wearily at him, he knows he hit it right on the nose. He hesitates, but only for a bit. “I’m not the first ghost to ask for your help. Am I?”

“Nope. Not the first one in the nest, Mark Lee.” He chirps. Then in a softer voice, “Not really.”

“Were they in much bigger trouble than I am?”

“A lot of them were,” Donghyuck answers, the chip in his voice wearing off. “Not trouble just, a lot of unfinished business but grayish. Not as clean as you. Some had the downhearted residue of their past lives painted all over their souls like body art but far from beautiful. Uglier. Sadder. Most of them are all shades of black and angry and tired.”

Mark thinks of a lot of things as Donghyuck proceeds to pretend the conversation never happened. First, he thinks of the spirits Donghyuck speak of that are much darker than he is. And he can only imagine the pain they’re stringing along with them even after life. Spirits that aren’t strong enough to lash out as vengeful, but also not clean enough to be like him. Just anchored on the reality of the world they once lived in, unable to move on, walking on the same world but without the color. Second, he thinks of Donghyuck tendency to laugh off something hard to chew and thinks maybe the comebacks and the flippancy are one way to lighten the load.

Mark knows he might be walking on thin ice right now but Donghyuck had always been too guarded with his thoughts, too pensive and Mark wants to know more about him and he hopes he’s not toeing the line. “Do they ask you to do hard stuff for them?”

Donghyuck stops turning pages and settles on one page with blank eyes. They pierce through it like staring right into some distant memory, ugly and scarring if his pained expression is anything to go by. But he swallows, and it’s as if not any of those exist at all when he speak. “Once the lost ones know I can see them, they ask me to do things for them. Hard stuff, but heck, even that doesn’t cover it. Do you know they like to borrow my body?” He smiles dryly. “But that stopped when I got this tattooed on my body.”

He pulls the sleeve of his jacket far up his arm to reveal a symbol of a sun impressed on his skin. “It’s a protective seal to keep me from possessions.”

“Donghyuck... I’m sorry I shouldn’t have asked.” Mark gulps, his mistake weighing down on him. “You don’t have to tell me.”

“It’s alright. I never told anyone about this before. Nobody else knew besides my family. Not even my best friend Renjun.” Donghyuck looks up at him, almost pleading to let him continue.

Mark nods to the unspoken question, because he couldn’t say no. And because Donghyuck sounds so desperate. As if not letting out will poison him from within.

“Dated back when I was twelve, when I first saw things. Mom said I should ignore them like she did, because her mom told her to. But it’s not that easy. They’re sad and lost and there’s nothing I can do for them. But once you hear their cries, you can’t pretend for long you don’t hear them you know? You can hear their pain. You can hear _everything_ and you have a hard time sleeping when it’s loud.”

Donghyuck swallows, unmindfully rubbing at one of crisp pages of the book he holds, like he can still hear them right now, even through the thick walls and the stagnant quiet.

“Not everything is evil out there, you know. A lot of times it’s just... sad. And sometimes, it’s worse than any scary monster. I don’t want to know what it’s like to be out there, fighting. On top of all the things I can see and hear...” Donghyuck pauses, eyes downcast. “I’m not sure I can handle more. All those pain, all those suffering, all those hate. It’s just too much.”

The silence that follows after figuratively burns against Mark’s nape, almost like he could feel the exact weight of Donghyuck’s burden on his own shoulders. Grave and straining and chained around his chest.

“And then there’s another selfish reason.” Donghyuck chuckles without the breath of humor, lips quivering faintly. “I feel like there’s something more I should be doing than the noble thing. I want to live like a dumb and broke college student who gets out to drink and get wasted at the end of the night. To worry about failing exams, to worry about my future and not worrying about the future of the world. Don’t I sound selfish? Sometimes it feels like running away. How can I be so selfish that I let my cousin do all the work for the both of us? When we should be together out there, helping each other out.”

“It’s not being selfish, Donghyuck. It’s not. It’s not up to you to save the world,” says Mark, meaning it. “You living your life is not selfishness.”

Donghyuck looks up at him and he sees his eyes gleam with moisture, and for a second he thought, tears will fall but none came down. In a blink of an eye, Donghyuck is flashing him his distracting smile, like he’s trying to divert Mark’s attention to something shiny and away from his tears. “Welp, that took a dark turn. Yeesh, too much dust in here. Is it the maid’s day off? Sorry for dumping all of those on you.”

“Are you okay?” Mark asks him because he’s not a fool and he knows tears when he sees it.

“Peachy, Mark Lee.” Donghyuck grandly gestures around the room. Just like that the small crack showing a hint of vulnerability snaps shut and the cheery, jibing Donghyuck returns in its place. “You just helped me break into one of the most sacred places in the universe. Let’s keep this a secret, though. Or else Taeyong would have my head on a spike.”

After all that, Mark doesn’t buy it. Not when the terror doesn’t completely disappear from his eyes even despite a trying smile. Mark licks his lips because he feels it again, the overpowering feeling he had back at the hospital to interfere when Donghyuck was just about to take a misstep and fall down. Every senses inside him urging him _he has to._ “I remember something from my... life before. I remember something about playing in a band.”

It’s one thing he remembers almost vividly, standing on a stage in front of a sufficient number of people for it to be considered a successful gig. He remembers manning an electric guitar, the heat rising in the place as the entire place pulses with loud, intoxicating music. The hyped screaming. The fire in his chest and liquid bliss pumping wildly in his veins.

He remembers playing acoustic, a girl sitting beside him and lulling the audience with soft tunes. He remembers the light on him, the people watching and adoring the way he plucks the strings and their hearts on countless occasions. He remembers it was the best damn feeling in the world and he remembers wanting that more than anything.

Donghyuck remains attentively silent. It might’ve been the most significant memory Mark had retrieved from his previous life.

“I remember wanting to break away. To live my life like you said. But I don’t know. I don’t know if that went well.” Mark looks down at his hands and sees them shaking. It probably didn’t if that’s the last thing he did before he came to this point. Before he died. But he finds no regret. Like what Donghyuck said, he’s clean. He doesn’t feel any regret, so that must be a good thing, right? “But it’s not selfish. I was happy I did what I did. My life is mine, my mistakes are also mine. But that’s the most important thing about it.”

Silence falls on them, so many tacit words heavy in the way that isn’t jarring, instead comfortable and familiar. Something they both share and relate to. Something they found in each other’s presence.

“I’m sorry for dumping this on you,” Mark says earnestly after awhile, gesturing at himself. “I know I’m giving you a hard time with all this.”

Donghyuck gives him an “are-you-serious” look that he withers under just slightly. It softens into something warmer and softer though, as if Mark is not someone he can resist for long.

“You’re not the world, Mark Lee. I’m sure I can handle you just fine.” He holds up the thick book, grinning like that’s all it takes for everything to be alright. “Now, who wants to go do some more homework?”

 

 

**IV.  
** _donghyuck_

 

 

 ** _When_** Renjun comes home with Jaemin the following day, it’s no huge shocker that his boyfriend knows everything that happened that night despite Donghyuck’s severe warnings not to tell anyone else because he’s Renjun and he just doesn’t listen to _fucking reason._

When Jaemin starts pestering Donghyuck about the clips from the “haunted hospital hunt”, Donghyuck wishes looks can kill, specifically those he sends Renjun who’s inconspicuously sipping tea on the kitchen counter. Mark, on the other hand, stations himself at one far corner of the living room looking like a deer caught in the headlights at the sudden increase of alive and moving people moving about. His fraught expression slacks when Donghyuck catches his eyes as Jaemin disappears into the kitchen, and he likes to think Mark has somehow gotten comfortable enough with him to let his guard down with him around.

“You alright?” Donghyuck signs, holding up an “OK” sign with a quizzical expression.

Mark nods, stirring a finger around the room and mirroring his look.

Donghyuck rolls his eyes. “You can talk you know. Nobody else can hear you.”

“Oh. Right. I forgot.” A faint tint of pink blooms across his cheeks and Donghyuck still can’t wrap his head around a _blushing ghost._ But apparently, Mark isn’t entirely what they thought he is. Donghyuck grins at him, because it’s easier to smile than to worry about what his expression might look to Mark while he’s thinking about it, and Mark clears his throat. “I’ll walk around and try not to knock anything down.”

“Oh, don’t let me hold you back please.” Donghyuck chuckles, keeping an eye out for the kitchen door in case either one of his company walks out. “A ghost is a handy icebreaker during sleepovers.”

“I won’t be your little party trick.” Mark humors. “Is Jaemin staying the night?”

“I don’t know but it’s a possibility.” Donghyuck laughs at Mark’s souring face. “Oh, don’t worry. It’s gonna be fun. Meet the guys.”

Donghyuck shushes the moment he hears approaching voices just in time when Renjun saunters in, holding a camera and wearing a scowl on his face.

“Did you delete those clips from the other night?” he demands at Donghyuck, then calls out to his boyfriend. “Jaemin, I told you the poltergeist thing looks exactly the same as the sketch I made. _Yes, it exists_!”

“On the second thought,” Donghyuck says, pulling a face. “Don’t meet Renjun. He’s a _huge fan.”_

The previously softly buzzing apartment effectively becomes more lively when Jeno drops by with a six pack and greasy takeouts. Too lively for Mark who apparently gets flustered way too easily, always watching his movements as if he’s made of visible matter. Donghyuck is not about to deny the silent splendor, or lack thereof, Mark puts on from the sidelines doesn’t amuse him because it does, and more often than not, he finds himself puffing out well-timed laughs in between the group’s anecdotes whenever Mark accidentally knocks down things in the background and hastily straightens up again. The ones he can’t hold in, he hides behind a cough or a mere fist, passing a secret look at Mark who huffs at him indignantly, yet returns it with a smile.

Eventually learning his lesson, Mark stays still and entertains himself through listening to them exchange stories. Jaemin talks about cheer practice that extends for another two weeks into the summer. Renjun mentions planning for a trip downtown to the local art museum sometime before he flies back to China. Jeno expresses concern about the stray cats at the park. Donghyuck complains about a nonexistent rat infestation that is responsible for things mysteriously tipping over in their apartment. Jaemin argues it might be some ghost and moans wanting to see it.

In that time, Mark regards the three boyfriends as if they’re the most fascinating specimen on the planet. Donghyuck couldn’t blame him. Even he finds them impressive for keeping such a high-maintenance relationship running smoothly. It’s almost like they’re three peas in a pod, made to complement each other in ways more than one. Their relationship is not without friction every now and then—sometimes even painfully screeching, from Donghyuck’s firsthand experience, being the middle man caught in crossfire—but their resilience in turning sour contrast into an advantage or even a perk makes them so remarkable in Donghyuck’s eyes. That’s why their occasional teasing about him joining in on them proves to be burdensome. He couldn’t exactly imagine himself fitting somewhere in the equation. Not quite. It’s like a red panda butting into three otters cuddling and sniffing each other’s whiskers lovingly. It just wouldn’t work for the red panda.

Mark looks at them exactly as if he’s watching three otters cuddling. That is until Jaemin and Renjun start making out. Then, Jaemin and Jeno make out next.

Donghyuck gives the flustered Mark a look and a pout, forming a sarcastic heart with his fingers.

Mark laughs out loud and knocks down the nearby vase. Donghyuck blames it on the rats.

After Jaemin and Jeno leave that night, Renjun puts on an episode of _The Haunting of Hill House_ and insists on cuddling him on the couch. Donghyuck indulges him because it’s something they do out of habit and he just couldn’t say no. He tucks himself into Renjun, nuzzling his head under his jaw and makes himself as small and huggable as possible. Renjun chuckles when he whines inside his arms, sliding a hand down Donghyuck’s torso delicately and securing his other hand with a tight grip of the other. Their legs are in a snug mesh but it’s warm, _it’s very warm_ and Donghyuck doesn’t mind laying on Renjun’s slightly bony chest because his warmth makes up for it. He can steadily fall asleep there, listening to his heartbeat and just—

Donghyuck’s water bottle decks from the table, earning all the attention in the room.

His eyes shift to Mark who’s standing over the bottle, trying to look innocent.

“What was _that?”_ Renjun breathes. “Was that a ghost? Donghyuck, do you see _something?”_

“W-What? No. Not really.”

Donghyuck glares at Mark, who shrugs.

“Man, not cool,” Mark says. “You’re cuddling a guy with _two boyfriends._ What would Jeno and Jaemin say?”

He didn’t know Mark got attached to the Bermuda Love Triangle this much, so quickly.

Except, he isn’t really. Because on a closer look, why would he bother watching where their hands end up where with so much attention, or why would he bother tugging Donghyuck’s ears again and again just to remind him of something Donghyuck knew very well and respected?

What would Jeno and Jaemin say?

Jeno and Jaemin would’ve jumped right into their arms if they were there, and Mark might know it as they had blatantly teased Donghyuck again about joining in and he had expressed mild concern about it. But oh, Donghyuck digresses because he’s nice and he can’t talk back with Renjun in the room but he doesn’t fight off the smile that sneaks up his lips as he finally peels himself off of Renjun before Mark starts toppling all the furniture.

 

 

 ** _“What_** if there’s nothing wrong with me at all? What if, for some reason,” Mark says, leaning back on his arms and tears away from the sunset he’s feasting his eyes on to look at Donghyuck. “I’m just here. I couldn’t move on. I couldn’t be saved. What if you’re stuck with me forever?”

Donghyuck has thought about it for more times that he’s willing to admit, countless inescapable what-ifs in case they don’t find anything popping up in his mind every time he closes a book of no assistance. But he puts on a face that says it’s the first time it occurred to him and steals that moment to look at Mark with his best-puzzled face. It’s a good excuse to stare at him. He almost, always never questions him about it and just blushes.

It’s a free pass. Kinda feels like taking advantage but without the harm.

“Please.” Donghyuck snorts. “Grim reapers wouldn’t allow it.”

Mark grimaces, a funny face, it’s like a combined expression of a disgusted face with less disgust and more constipated-thinking kind of a way. It’s ridiculous, but it’s cute and it’s also Mark so... “Why didn’t take me yet if they gave a shit?”

Donghyuck puffs out a giggle at the profanity, turning another page of his book over with no intention to read anything. It’s not like he hasn’t been through his book yet a couple of times just to keep the image up. Donghyuck _is_ working, despite the suspiciously long time he’s spending on one book but the rest of the pile is too far away from his arm’s reach and he thinks they’re living a very delicate moment right now, so delicate that it could shatter into thousands of irreparable pieces once he dares too many movements.

“I mean, yeah, think about it. What are they doing?”

“I don’t know, off to some Grim reaper amusement park to take a break when you pseudo-died?”

“Ha-ha.”

“Okay, _not_ Grim Reaper park but you know, grim reapers can take illegal breaks. Sometimes they do, actually. Have you heard of any “miracles” that happen around hospitals or any place where a person that _should_ be dead didn’t die?”

Mark does the confused, funny face again like he does when Donghyuck brings up more supernatural stuff. “Yeah?”

Donghyuck lifts a hand off the book he’s holding to point at Mark. “A grim reaper being lazy and humanity thinks it’s “a miracle”.”

“Huh,” Mark says. “That’s sad.”

“I know right?” Donghyuck agrees, chuckling to himself. “One being’s procrastinating tendencies is another being’s second shot at life. Kinda makes you feel better at putting off your paper because what the hell I might save a soul somewhere right?”

Mark giggles like a kid, little dimples making themselves known to the clouds. But they couldn’t appreciate it like Donghyuck and his lips that curl on cue, subtle at first as he finds anything closely amusing to pass his full-blown smile over. It’s concerning how he might’ve developed some kind of weird reflex to respond to everything Mark does, but what can Donghyuck do, really, other than just sit there and revel in the things he never saw Mark do before like lick his lips more times than he obviously needed, pull the constipated face when he’s confused or trying to concentrate, the show of dimples when he smiles, the adorable high-pitched chuckles he makes over jokes if Donghyuck gets lucky.

Little things he never saw Mark do before and never did in front of a crowd.

Donghyuck thinks about how far he’d come, it’s almost surreal, shifty like he’s living a distant dream. Mark, the Mark from the lonely nights, sitting a few breaths away from him. Laughing. Possibly breathing if ghosts do breathe. Moving. _Laughing. Talking._ With him.

“But really. _What_ would you feel if I’m stuck with you?”

It’s a particularly brave question to ask considering all Mark was doing in the past few days is skirt around Donghyuck in every sense of the word. But Mark was catching up surprisingly fast to know how Donghyuck operates and before they both knew it, they were riding each other’s waves as smoothly as two people who shares a secret can manage in a few short days.

Donghyuck likes to think this arrangement as nothing less than sharing a secret because affinity builds up strong on that kind of pact. Mark knows Donghyuck and his sight. Donghyuck knows more stuff about Mark than what Mark thinks.

“Eh. Not sure what to feel. Doesn’t feel right having a spirit around.” He knows _exactly_ what to feel. Donghyuck hums. “But if we’re stuck with each other, I’d at least have someone to do stuff for me.”

“That’s my afterlife, then, doing errands for you.”

“It’s a fair give and take.” Donghyuck gives him a brow wiggle. “Not so bad, is it?”

“Yeah, sure. Top on my list on how I want to spend my afterlife.”

Donghyuck counters Mark’s eye roll with a sweet, sweet smile and focuses on ghost sickness and the man throwing up on the open page of his book just so he can cease smiling so much. In reality, he could never ask for a better way to spend the lazy afternoon than atop the roof, watching the sunset with the ghost you’re fortunately stuck with. Specifically Mark and his funny confused face and his questions. The rooftop sounds like the next best place to hang out ever since Renjun came back, whose bound to raise more questions so they move the book club where the view is perfect without Renjun and there’s peace among the winds.  

“What are you going to do then, if not stick with me?” He shrugs, going through the same paragraph again. _Ghost sickness symptoms include extreme irrational fear, intense itching on the inner arm... blushing._ Not blushing. Come on, that’s not even there.

“If I don’t have a choice. Maybe. Might as well stick with the only person that can see me.”

Donghyuck scoffs, feigning indignation flawlessly. “Aha! You’ll only stick with me because I’m convenient. Oh, well. That’s nice to know. Some friend you are, Mark Lee. But thanks! I’m glad to know.”

“Oh, no, no, no. That’s not what I meant. I meant it’s nice to...” He trails off when Donghyuck snickers at him, squinting. “You’re messing with me.”

“Oh no, I’m _really_ sulky but it’s just... your face.” Donghyuck points at it. “It’s funny.”

Mark shakes his head and his lips curl into something like a smile and a scowl. “You always do that.”

Donghyuck grins. It’s one thing he knows that works.

Mark says something but Donghyuck misses it and stares up at him questioningly. He almost breaks out a warm blush himself when Mark deliberately stares back.

“What was it?” Donghyuck asks.

“I said thank you.”

 _Stupid reflex._ Donghyuck scrunches his face to hide the twitch of his muscles. “You shouldn’t thank me yet.”

“I’m thanking you anyway.” Mark clears his throat. “For trying.”

There’s a brief moment even more fragile than what they have before, lasting just long enough for their gazes to lock on each other and their lips curve into one smile, and they know, somehow that they think of the same things when they’re left with their own thoughts.

“One of these days,” Donghyuck says brightly, after the moment passes, “I should give you a guitar.”

Mark squints at him for a whole different reason. For one insignificant moment, Donghyuck panics, struggling to form together an actual sentence that not only makes sense but also makes a point. “Because... you told me you play, right? Or did you just say it to impress me?”

_Nailed it._

His scoff is so half-hearted and flimsy that the wind carries it along. Then he looks back at Donghyuck again, opening and closing his mouth for a moment’s hesitation then, utters an almost shy, “Want to hear a song?”

It’s a good thing Mark’s constipated-staring at the pink clouds right after he asked, or else Donghyuck would’ve looked like a whole idiot to him grinning so wide like that.

“I have a guitar in my room.”

“Great.” Mark clears his throat, flushing faint pink. “I’m not sure if I still got it though. Or if I can touch the guitar at all. Or if I can still _play._ ”

Donghyuck scoffs like it’s the most absurd thing he has ever heard in his life because it probably was. _Mark? Not playing the guitar?_ Ridiculous. “Relax, Mark Lee. It’s only me.”

That seems to do the trick because Mark’s shoulders sag when he’s not on his guard.

“I’ll be right back.”

Despite being a ghost that doesn’t seem to struggle with lifting a guitar up just by sheer want, Mark Lee still got it.

 

 

 ** _Nothing_** ever feels right for very long, Donghyuck finds. Not even an evening that seems to stretch for a few years. Certainly not in their situation where everything can turn south at any time as soon as the following morning.

It starts with Mark disappearing.

In the first few hours, Donghyuck doesn’t fret over it and counts it as Mark getting away for a quick change of scenery but even the morning cereals soured in taste just to contradict his positive thinking.

(“Hyuck.” Renjun pales when he walks into Donghyuck rubbing the rancid taste of milk off his tongue. “Please tell me you knew that milk went bad a few days ago.”)

Mark’s idea of sceneries might include the roof after he has discovered the anti-stress properties of looking at the skyline of the city. (Not the roof, Donghyuck impulsively checked the moment it came up on his options.) Maybe some tea shop a few blocks down the street to relive his mornings as a college student who’s perchance too health-conscious to drink caffeine. (Still not the tea shop, or the toy shop next to that nor the pharmacy next to that.)

Maybe someplace else that’s not ghost-hazardous. Somewhere without any deadly condiments or any warding spells within range.

It feels silly looking for a ghost in a busy street in the middle of the day but Donghyuck couldn’t shake off the feeling of unease that he keeps on walking a few more blocks aimlessly. He knows he’s not really doing anything here. Trying to find Mark in a place like this is like trying to find a needle in a haystack without a magnet to help him, but the walking helps him think and soon enough, he decides to try the hospital to test out a hunch.

He never liked hospitals, haunted or not.

Donghyuck walks up to the receptionist through the bustling lobby. “Hi. I’m looking for a Mark Lee. Went in here sometime this month?”

The lady behind the counter gives him a startled look, which he appeases with a wide smile before she sifts through the records. She adjusts the spectacles sitting on her nose and taps on a paper. “Room 278, dear.”

Donghyuck curls his fist. He’s right. _He’s right._

“Can I ask what happened to Mark? I’m a classmate of his and I’m worried about him. Nobody thought of filling me in.”

“Oh dear, the poor kid got into a car accident a few weeks back. Almost a month now. A nasty one. It was a miracle he was still alive,” the lady says, wide-eyed. “His brother was driving if I can recall. Poor, poor kids. They didn’t deserve this.”

Donghyuck could feel the entire world’s weight grave onto his shoulders, and for a moment, he couldn’t breathe. His chest tightens and hateful haze starts crowding his eyes.

He shouldn’t be right. He should’ve been wrong. Mark should’ve been just a ghost, nothing more, nothing less but instead...

“Son?” the lady asks him, eyeing him with concern. “Are you alright?”

He offers her a tiny smile. “I’m fine. Thank you.”

As he sprint-walks all the way up to the room, thoughts race through his mind in a wild attempt to dampen his nerves. In the past days he’s scouring through book after book, he didn’t exactly end up with nothing at all. In one of Taeyong’s books, he had read about a kind of thought-form that manifests after a specific situation where one’s brain falls in a deep sleep after an accident or a head trauma. He had the hunch the moment Mark appeared in his apartment, asking for help and looking nothing like a threat but exactly like the way he last saw him. A hoodie of his unchanging taste, rebellious orange hair patted down, big, doe eyes pure of all horrors the world is filled with, same pink lips, same slender fingers yet more high-strung... Mark Lee.

The Mark Lee who shines so bright. The Mark Lee who excels in everything. The Mark Lee who is patient, who doesn’t show enough weakness. The Mark Lee who’s at the breaking point of his life before him. Cold, broken, confused, reaching out for his help.

How can he say no to that? It’s the Mark Lee he couldn’t resist. The Mark Lee who whispers for his name during the lonely nights with his melodies and pulls him out of the dark pit he falls in. The Mark Lee who soothes his soul from a crowd apart, shining on the stage the way no precious gem ever can.

And he was there standing and thinking he died wherein fact he’s something worse.

If he were dead, then that was it. He couldn’t do anything about it. Not even Taeyong, not even Doyoung who excels in spells the most. But if he’s another thing entirely, that’s where hopes sprout and grow roots. Hope is a lot harder to rip up, a lot more painful when it falls apart.

There’s nothing worse than thinking you’ve got a chance at something only to watch it crumble before your very eyes.

The right room towers inconspicuously over Donghyuck. It’s deceptive the way it looks just like any other hospital door when what it hides behind it might change his life. He holds his breath for as long as he can until he gathers enough courage to open the door. Behind it, he finds exactly what he is expecting to see. Mark Lee, wearing that forest green hoodie standing over another Mark Lee wearing a hospital gown, lying on a bed, deep in comatose sleep.

Donghyuck witnesses his deepest fears come true.

Mark isn’t a ghost. He was something more.

He notices him come in but doesn’t jump on the first chance to corner Donghyuck with questions. He just stands next to his limp body for a while, like he’s trying to make sense of the fact that he’s in two places at once. The thought holds, for a minute, as Mark finally regards Donghyuck with a withered look and a weak smile. “Hey.”

Donghyuck swallows back shards of glass in his throat.

He follows Mark slowly walk over to his body, tracing a finger down one of the tubes that connect it to the beeping machine, as though he’s making sure it’s there. He winces when his eyes land on his bruises. His body looks battered beyond belief. Cuts litter every inch of his bare skin, his eye swelling with an angry shade of purple and black. The soft, stable beeping of the machine seems to prickle Donghyuck’s skin and takes pleasure in reminding him the past few days are just a fleeting taste of a fantasy that is never to be.

“I’m in coma, Donghyuck. I’m not dead.” Mark starts, silently. The way he looks breaks Donghyuck’s heart again, because it’s a sight much more pitiful than his physical body. He looks more wore-down, more beaten than he could ever, burdened by the sights and the truths he had to bear witness that day and Donghyuck just wants to hug him. Tug him out and fly him away from all of this. To keep him safe somewhere the cruel world couldn’t catch up to them, where it couldn’t find them.

“I got into a car accident with my brother. Jaehyun. I don’t know what happened. I was in your apartment one minute and the next I was here. I saw my brother, Jaehyun. He was there and he was talking to me. He’s telling me to hold on and wake up, he’s... he’s sorry. He told me he’s sorry, over and over again. Told me to come home and I don’t know what it means.”

Donghyuck exhales, sharp and heavy, but it does nothing to his aching nerves. It does nothing to save him from doing this. He still needs to say it. “Mark, I know what happened.”

Mark’s face shifts. “What? What do you mean?”

“I meant,” Another breath. Chest still unbelievably tight. “I know you got into an accident. I know you got in coma. I know _you_ , Mark. I know.”

“You know...” Mark’s voice breaks.

“The receptionist told me.” Donghyuck pauses and thinks through the loud thumping of his pulse in his ears. He swallows, not sure if he can even speak when he’s too nervous and overwhelmed to even utter a word.

_But I had my hunches. I knew this might happen. I knew you might’ve been asleep. But I didn’t tell. I couldn’t do that to you._

“I ran away.” Mark says finally, realization sinking in. “I remember now.”

His hands grip hard into fists, digging hard onto his palms that his knuckles look almost white. “I ran away from home because I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to break free from my parents. From my past life. My brother was begging me to go home but I didn’t. The only way for him to see me was to ask me to the movies, just like what you guys always do back then. I thought it was a good idea so I went with Jaehyun. But then I got into an accident on the way to the cinema and then...”

Donghyuck’s eyes sting, and when he realizes he couldn’t hold back what’s coming forth, he curls his fists.

“I got into a coma.”

Mark’s face dims with the sudden weight of it, flopping down on the sofa and clasping his head with his hands. He looks up a moment later, the hopeful look on his eyes makes Donghyuck want to rip his own heart out of his chest instead. “But that’s it. I can wake up. I can still fix this. I can wake up, right? I’m not dead.”

Donghyuck bites his lip, forcing himself not to break down right there and then. He forces himself to speak, no matter how broken he sounds. “Mark, there’s something else.”

A pause, then a cautious, “What do you mean, there’s something else?”

“You’re in a state called extremis,” says Donghyuck. “It’s in Latin which means ‘at the point of death’.”

The machine beeps consistently. Physical Mark lays on the bed, inert and heavy. Ghost Mark squeezes his eyes shut. Donghyuck hastily wipes away his first tear.

He presses on, “In the state of extremis, a coma patient regains consciousness through a separate manifestation of himself. You’re a thought form. That’s why you can pass through walls and move about without being bound to one place. That’s why you hear all those voices because you’re still alive and you’re connected to your body. Your consciousness doesn’t sink into state of extremis until the patient has only a few weeks to live. Mostly, days.”

 _Hours, now. Minutes._ Who knows?

Mark nods, and nods again, like he’s waiting for more. When nothing comes, he doesn’t ask. He smiles instead, small and weak, because he knows.

 

 

 ** _Mark_** is awfully silent on the way home and Donghyuck is too scared to know what he’s thinking. Too scared to break the only time of tranquility between them because who knows what’s about to transpire from the realization that what they have right now is fragile. Temporary and timed. His treacherous mind mocks him with a soft _tick tock, tick tock._

Funny because Donghyuck never liked the sound of a ticking clock. It used to remind him so much about the midnights he spent wide-awake under his duvet, terrified, waiting for the next spirit to come barging in to ask for his help. It still reminds him of a much scarier truth, that everything in his life is passing and that time doesn’t wait nor stop for anyone.

Not even for Mark. Not even for them. Not even for a few hours.

“You put off telling me what you were thinking because you were scared it’d break me.” Mark breaks the ice between them for him, in a surprisingly light tone. He kicks a piece of asphalt away. “Didn’t you?”

Donghyuck stares at Mark’s feet and thinks even if time doesn’t stop for anyone, at least he’s got right now. And right now, Mark, in his hoodie and floppy orange hair, is just as real as he is.

“I’m sorry,” he says, quietly. “I wasn’t sure then. I read a few similar things on Taeyong’s books. I had my suspicions. Maybe subconsciously I didn’t want to be right about them.”

Mark is looking up the sky when Donghyuck sneaks a look. He isn’t looking at where he’s walking, though their listless pace doesn’t need it. “You didn’t have to do that. I was already in too deep.”

“I didn’t want you to be.”

Mark’s eyes snap back down and at him, but they look like they’re still watching the stars. Donghyuck falters and looks away. He shouldn’t be flushing this hard right now. He shouldn’t. He’s being insensitive and assuming. And out of line.

Then, in a softer voice, “Donghyuck, when you said you knew me, did you mean you knew me from before the accident?”

He nods. “Yes.”

“From school or from the shows?”

Donghyuck is starting to think of a way out, a quip, anything like he always does to deflect and escape but then he decides if right now is all they got, then he’ll keep it pure. In a firm voice, he answers. “From the shows.”

“Hmm.”

“I, uh.” Donghyuck scratches the back of his head. “I used to send you... letters.”

He used to convince himself they were more than just fan letters, if there is a label for a letter of more intimacy than the normal fan letter because they always were for Donghyuck. “Fan letter” just doesn’t cut it, not to the level of sincerity and childish vulnerability those letters hold that he never wished for anyone else to see ever. But it could’ve easily been the illusion of being different from the others that Donghyuck didn’t count himself as a fan. He saw himself as a beguiled bystander who eventually became a regular listener then an admirer. Not a fan. A fan had limits. He didn’t want to be bound by the same limits. It was when he finally snapped out of it that he realized he wasn’t anything special. He was just a fan of Mark, simple as that, despite the not-so-simple feelings blooming for him.

“Oh.” Mark blinks, a flutter of his pretty eyelashes, unsure of what to say. “I think I might’ve read some of it but I couldn’t remember any Donghyuck Lee.”

 _Just a fan._ Donghyuck smiles.

“You don’t even remember your birthday,” says Donghyuck because Mark really doesn’t. “But I put in my initials. And your birthday is on the 2nd of August.”

Mark smiles at him guiltily and Donghyuck doesn’t even bother pretending he’s sulky because he’s not. Not right now, when he’s already broken all the boundaries. Being here. Being with Mark. They both let the sounds of their feet take a hold of the conversation until they turn around the corner to Donghyuck’s apartment, where Mark finally asks, “Donghyuck, can you please do something for me?”

 

 

 ** _“I_** know we’ll have a hard time trying to convince my brother about... me so how about we write him a letter instead?”

Donghyuck hunches over atop a bookshelf, clearing away enough space between the books for him to place a piece of stationery with a pen in his hand, ready to write. Mark stands looking perfectly in place in between shelves of the small bookstore, almost blending in with its core color, faded, forest green just like his hoodie. The substandard lighting overhead makes him look more translucent and more poignant hovering next to him. More twitchy. Nervous. Solemn.

At first, words are hard to come by and Mark couldn’t say anything that remotely makes sense, but Donghyuck helps him out by filtering Mark’s poor choice of words. After every few sentences down the road, he backpedals, mumbling what he had written for Mark and catching him wince at every inflection, as if those words didn’t feel real until it was read to him.

Donghyuck halts midway, the tips of his nail scrunching a portion of the stationery and barely keeping his fist from crumpling the paper altogether. “Mark.”

“Donghyuck,” then looks up at him, reflecting the exact unyielding expression on his face. “Keep going.”

Donghyuck rubs the paper with his fingers, condemning the insufferable amount of _I’m okay’s, I’ll be fine, I’m in a better place, you shouldn’t blame yourself_ fitted into a tapestry of Mark’s last words that aren’t truly his. “You’re not fine.”

“I will be.” Mark responds too quickly to be sincere. “I will be. My brother blames himself for what happened to me. He should know it’s alright.”

But it’s not alright. It’s not. Mark _isn’t._ He’s scared, Donghyuck knows this. And even if he is, he’s thinking of his brother.

“Donghyuck, I don’t want him to ruin his life because of this. Because of an accident that wasn’t even his fault.”

But it’s the accident that cost him his life.

“Donghyuck.”

He looks up at him, and his eyes still look the same, grave with fear and doubt, broken beyond belief. But they shine when he speaks of Jaehyun, and Donghyuck caves in because it’s the same spark he sees in his eyes whenever he talks about his music and his favorite songs. It’s the same spark he saw when he was watching the sky and the stars.

“Please,” says Mark. “Please tell him to let me go.”

Donghyuck hates that sentence. He hates it more when it sounds like something that isn’t only meant for Jaehyun. Donghyuck hates that it tugs at something inside him, the prissy, rational part that chokes him with it. Donghyuck hates how he picks things up the way they are and takes them in for himself.

Donghyuck hates that he needs to do it to himself.

But Donghyuck does what he’s told.

They place the letter on Mark’s bed and step out, just in time Jaehyun strolls in, catching sight of the white folded paper under Mark’s hand, bearing the goodbye Mark wanted to say.

 

 

 ** _When_** they came back to the apartment, Mark goes inside Donghyuck’s room and hides out in the dark.

Donghyuck follows him there, sitting against the door of his closet and staring blankly ahead. He tiptoes in, careful and quiet, sinking next to him on the floor. White luminescent moonlight filter through the curtains, patching glowing squares on the floor too far from their feet. Too far for any reflected flecks of light to reach. It’s too quiet, the darkness too cold and thick against his back that Donghyuck doesn’t dare say anything.  

Most people fear the dark. Donghyuck does too, sometimes, but only when he doesn’t know what hides behind it, waiting to prey. Waiting to break free. Waiting to be saved. Because for some people, it’s the best hiding spot from the world.

Donghyuck can feel the cold swimming around the air that surrounds Mark, it’s one thing he knew so well from the days of his youth, stuck on the tree where he saw his first spirit with her graying neck and the graying noose tied around it. She was silent, not exactly the kind of ghosts that hang around the cemetery like the ones that pester Donghyuck the most whenever he walks past them. Her stares weren’t cold nor hot with life’s fury. It’s soft with acquiescence of his fate, almost as if telling him nothing else matters at this point but the final glimpse of someone who knows she exists. It feels familiar in a way that breaks Donghyuck’s heart, poking through the smallest fissure on it just to shatter it to studs, because the lady on the tree disappear after the cold feeling does.

“Donghyuck?” Mark whispers.

“I’m here.”

“Are you really?”

_Where else would I be than here?_

“Hold my hand, then.”

He holds out his arm, hand splaying in the air and for the first time, their palms touch. Mark feels cold, and Donghyuck doesn’t like the way it seeps into his hand so differently. Doesn’t like the way that Mark feels and looks like an illusion fleshed out from his sleep-deprived brain, brilliant in the dark, but almost a part of it. Doesn’t like the way the harder he seems to hold on to him, the faster he seems to fade.

“Donghyuck.”

The way he calls him crushes him in ways he couldn’t imagine.

But Donghyuck whispers his assurance anyway, as if everything’s going to be alright. “Here.”

Mark sounds close, almost inside his head. “I-I don’t want to die.”

Donghyuck tries harder to hold him and keep him for awhile, he seems to be there, solid and tangible and within reach but he’s too scared he’ll slip through his fingers. Mark grips on his hand like he’s thinking the same thing. Crowding in on his space like a lost child scared of the dark, clutching the only light he can see.

“I know.”

“Donghyuck, I’m scared.” Mark whispers low. Shakily. A patch of his hair catches in his. “I’m very, very scared.”

“Shh. There. I’m here.”

He doesn’t say it’s okay because he knows it’s not. It’s not okay. It’s unfair to have your hopes dashed before your very eyes, to have the rug get pulled from under your feet. Just when you thought you’re finally afloat and you get the taste of the air in your lungs, the sun in your face, freedom and salvation then all of a sudden, it pulls you right back under, deeper than you’ve been before. And you’re gone again and this time you can’t even hope because it robs you of it, sucks the life force out of you until you’re nothing but an empty husk of what you used to be.

Then just like that, you forget how.

How to hope. How to fear. How to live. You just stop altogether.

It’s funny how humanity has so many fancy words for death. Beginning of another life. End of a suffering. Being in a better place. Moving on.

Wherein fact it’s a lot simpler than that. Death is stopping.

You stop breathing. You stop hoping. You stop trying. You stop feeling. You stop existing.

“You won’t be there for long.” Mark whispers, his voice muffled against his neck.

Mark doesn’t smell anything, of course, he doesn’t. But he once did. And it still irks Donghyuck he didn’t even get a chance to know what he smelt like. Does Mark smell like your everyday boy next door? Does he smell something more unexpected like detergent, Tide, or _roses?_ God, Donghyuck loved the smell of roses, he used to blindly associate roses with Mark and Mark with roses just so he can have a connection between the two most favorite things in the world.

“I’ll be here as long as you need me to be.”

“Thank you.”

Donghyuck feels a pair of lips land on his hand. His chest seems to collapse in on itself. _This is unfair. This is so unfair._

But he tries because this is the only thing he can do right now when everything is falling apart. When even the dark feels unreal.

“I know it’s scary. Heck, I know every shades of scary. And it’s alright to be scared. W-We’ll spend tomorrow anywhere you like to go. Let’s do that. Let’s do the things you want to do before you finally move on. You can do that, right? We can make a bucket list. That should give you some more time. Some more excuses. Unfinished business, right?

Hope. Donghyuck gives him one more hope to cling to.

One more.

“Okay.” Mark says meekly, then a little bit lighter. “Okay, let’s do that.”

They spend the night wishing. Wishing for things to turn out differently because that’s all they could do. They list out things they want to try together, the sillier the better. The wilder the better. Sneak a ride to an amusement park. Prank Renjun. Transfer one parking ticket from one car to another. It seems to go as well as planned, having Mark smiling along to the crazy pictures he paints him, being out there doing all these crazy stunts he never would’ve done when he was alive but now he had the chance to, and tomorrow, first thing Donghyuck is going to do is to take him to the places he will enjoy.

Mark, for the last time, is filled with the happiness of living.

Not everyone was given a chance for a last glimpse of the sun but Mark did.

And he plants a kiss on his forehead, barely even there and physically, it only felt like quick gush of wind breaking against his skin but it’s _there._ Donghyuck knows it’s real no matter how much it seems like it’s not. No matter how much it seems like the night was just an illusion, a dream that only felt real but never was, but it’s real.

Donghyuck holding on to what remains of Mark Lee is real, a list of happy things he needs to do before he moves on. It weighs on his hand like a soundless reassurance that it wouldn’t end unless you want it to.

The last smile Mark gives him before he falls asleep tells him it’s everything he wanted.

 

 

 ** _The_** next morning, Donghyuck finds, Mark stopped.

 

 

*

 

 

_Dear Mark,_

_Hi! You probably don’t know me but I’m some guy at the back of the crowd watching you play because I couldn’t get lucky enough to get a pass to the front. Which is a bummer but at least I still get to be there, even with so many people in between me and the stage. You also probably heard this a lot of times before but you’re a really great guitar player and I’m happy you’re up there, showing us what you can do and putting smiles on our faces. I really appreciate that. I really appreciate you. You might not know it but you play really good, its magic in my ears. I find myself humming your original songs and find them very comforting. Your melody gives me light, Mark Lee. You’re awesome._

_I just wish one day, you look at me and see me there at the back of the crowd. At the left corner of any crowd, you can expect to see me around there, wearing something awesome like a beret or a leather jacket if I can steal one from my cousin’s friend this summer, I’ll wear either just to mark me down._

_I hope tomorrow, you can look at me and see me. Keep smiling, Mark Lee._

**_LDH_ **

 


End file.
